


Ridiculous

by warmachine



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, M/M, POV Second Person, Wordcount: 50.000-100.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-15
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-25 14:45:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 44
Words: 58,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/639961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmachine/pseuds/warmachine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's one of those horrible winter days when it should be snowing, but it's not, and you swear it can't get any worse until you spot a strikingly ridiculous boy across the street.</p><p>(This is my first fic, so please cut it some slack if you're going to endure reading it. ouo)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if I'm going to add more chapters to this, but if I get around to it, it's certainly a possibility.  
> Sorry for the awful summary, I'm bad at those.

It's one of those days.

One of those days in the dead of winter when the sky is overcast and the air is cold, and you swear it's the perfect day for snow.

Instead, it rains.

In this rain you're walking along the sidewalk, hunched over a bit with your hands stuffed in the pockets of your vividly red sweatshirt. You don't have the most pleasant expression gracing your features right now, but you don't actually care very much.

It's raining.

Really, you hate the rain, so this weather is having a pretty awful effect on your mood. You were really hoping for that snow, but nope.

Rain.

You step up and come to a stop at a crosswalk, sighing with great annoyance and shuddering a bit from the cold. Just when you think your mood couldn't get any more foul, the classic occurs: a car shoots past and drives through a puddle, effectively soaking you with gross, muddy rainwater from the street, and just like that you're deciding to screw grocery shopping and you're on your way back to your apartment.

You've decided as of today that this winter has completely sucked.

You stop at another crosswalk on the way back, and you don't even bother to stand farther from the street this time because you're already soaked. You get more and more impatient as the light fails to change and you spend more and more time waiting out here in the rain.

Then you get a little distracted.

Across the street from you, standing in front of a music store, is a guy. Not just any guy, really, otherwise he wouldn't have caught your eye. He's fairly thin, and once he turns away from the store and starts walking your way, you see he's got messy, dark hair and comically large glasses. To be quite honest he looks ridiculous, what with his awkwardly tall body and buck teeth. Did you mention the grin he had seemingly plastered indefinitely to his face?

Ridiculous.

Soon, he comes to a stop right across the street from you, standing at the other crosswalk, and after a few moments of thinking you come to realize that, well, you're going to have to pass right by him when you both cross the street.

That's going to be a little awkward, especially if he noticed you staring at him.

You don't want to look like an idiot and veer off to the side as soon as you get near him, and you don't want to prolong your time in the rain any longer by taking another route. You lose yourself in strange thoughts of what to do until suddenly the light changed and he's walking toward you – shit, he walks really fast – and you find yourself, instinctively, walking as well. So as not to look like a moron.

As he gets closer you see he's, strangely, actually fairly attractive even with his ridiculous face and ridiculous stature and ridiculous voice and – he just spoke to you. Shit.

You desperately try to come up with some generic response to what he might have said until you realize that he was just answering his phone, and now you feel completely stupid.

You hurry over to the other side of the street and safely onto the sidewalk, walking quickly down it a ways before slowing down. You steal a cautious glance over to the other side of the street and you see, now, that it's he who's doing the staring this time.

You smirk to yourself, and you've decided that maybe this winter isn't so bad.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm attempting to continue this fic. I can't help but feel that it's going to reach a dead end and I'll never finish it, but I'll try.  
> (God, I have no confidence in my writing skills. Sorry that I suck so much at this.)

You go home to your apartment eventually. God damn it, your brother isn't home. Again.

Normally you wouldn't think twice about it, but he had the flu.

The flu.

And he went out.

You shake your head, forgetting about your brother, and you try to remember: have you ever seen that ridiculous guy before?

You completely rack your brain, but you don't remember ever seeing him.

Weird.

You wonder if he plays an instrument, since he was standing in front of the store like that.

You find yourself hoping to see him again.

\--

The next day starts out uneventful. Since you didn't actually get the groceries yesterday, you decide to go out to get them today.

(Maybe you'll see the guy.)

The ground is glistening, almost shiny, with yesterday's rain. It's humid as hell and it makes you feel really gross.

Maybe you should put off the groceries another day.

You sigh and go anyway, taking your sweet time in the supermarket in case the ridiculous guy happens to show up there.

He doesn't, of course, which makes you feel even more like shit.

You pay for the stuff you got, which is strikingly lacking in comparison to your usual haul, and you begin your irritated trudge home in the humid air.

You stop at that crosswalk from yesterday, scanning the sidewalk idly for the ridiculous guy.

He's nowhere to be found.

Not too long later, you're shutting the squeaky old door to your apartment and shuffling into the tiny kitchen with an exasperated sigh.

You wonder briefly how much energy you've spent lately on those sighs.

After putting away what few groceries you got – they're so lacking you're going to have to go shopping again before the week is over – you go out into the living room, looking around for your brother.

You search the whole apartment, thinking he could have passed out in a weird place like he does sometimes when he drinks, but you can't find him anywhere.

He must have gotten laid last night or something. Even with the flu.

You sigh yet again and hope he comes back soon.

\--

Your days go like that for a while, painfully uneventful, and you almost forget about the guy you saw. Your brother did come back not too long after you'd come home that day, and turns out yes, he did in fact get laid.

You wound up hearing far more details than you ever could have wanted to hear on that subject.

Most days he's still gone, though, and you find yourself worrying about him a lot.

Today, though, you're going out to try to find a CD you've been wanting for a while.

It's not humid or rainy this time: it's actually pretty cold and dry. It's not the most pleasant of weather, but you like it anyway. It's a nice, appropriately wintery change.

While you're on your way to the tiny little CD store you had in mind, you pass that music store the ridiculous guy was at. You pause, and look up at it, and after several moments of conflict you finally decide to go inside and check it out.

The walls of the store are lined with various instruments: guitars, violins, trumpets, ukeleles, clarinets, trombones, etc. One wall seems dedicated entirely to expensive-looking equipment: keyboards and music stands and percussion instruments.

The floor space has some of the stuff on the walls set up to be used, and it's also got a few amps lined up and some shelves filled with sheets of music.

All of this stuff is crammed together pretty tightly, and it would be kind of hard to get around, you think, if there were actually people in here.

Yet, the store was entirely empty.

Until you're approached by an employee.

You're ready to deny whatever offer for assistance is sure to come out of his mouth, but as soon as you get a good look at his face your mind goes blank and you just stand there like an idiot.

This particular employee has comically large glasses and messy, dark hair. Not to mention the hard-to-miss buck teeth.

Behind those lenses are the bluest eyes you've ever seen, and suddenly he's shaking your hand and you have no idea what's going on anymore. You realize he's said something to you and you choke out a “huh?”

“I saw you a while back!” he repeats, and you almost facepalm at how ridiculous his voice sounds. But you manage to refrain.

“What?”

“Across the street!” he says almost nauseatingly cheerfully. “The day it rained!”

“Um.”

You honestly have no idea how to respond to this guy.

“Well, even if you don't remember it, I'm seeing you now,” he says, finally letting go of your fucking hand. You notice how weird his teeth look and let out an exasperated sigh.

“Yeah, I guess so,” you grumble in response.

“You looked kind of weird,” he says, which forces a laugh out of you. “What? You did!” he squeaks defensively. “Don't deny it! Who wears sunglasses in the winter, much less in the rain?”

“I like how they look,” you lie. “Simple as that. You're really one to talk with the whole 'weird' thing, what with those huge things you've got on your face.”

You immediately regret making that crack about his glasses when he launches into a seemingly endless babble about his eyesight.

Soon, though, he cuts himself off to go terrorize another customer that just walked in behind you.

You realize you don't know his name, and part of you wants to be able to find him again, so you try to see if he's got one of those little nametags employees always seem to have.

You quirk a small smile when you see his.

“John”.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going backward a little bit in this chapter!  
> I'm still not too confident about this story, but I try!  
> Oh, and thanks for the hits and stuff! Really, I didn't think this would get many at all. I'm glad!

Your name is John.

Yesterday, at the crosswalk, you passed some freaky guy wearing sunglasses. It was raining. And also winter.

Today, you're trying to find him again.

You decide to go to the supermarket, since everyone has to go there sometime. You walk there slowly, scanning the sidewalk across the street carefully for him. You figure he'll be easy to spot: he's got those ridiculous shades, and his hair was such a light blond it was almost white.

While you're there at the store you figure you might as well get some stuff to eat for later, and while you're hunched over in a freezer looking for ice cream you swear you see him walk past in the reflection in the glass door.

You spin around and look for him, but all you see is a mom with her kid walking past and your own reflection in the door.

You get your ice cream and head to the checkout with a sigh, then regret getting something that needs to be frozen because now you've got to hurry home to put it away.

No more looking today, you suppose.

\--

After several days of trying and failing to find the sunglasses guy again, you try your best to forget about him.

Really, you think you've succeeded.

However, it's not as easy to forget him at work than you thought. The music store is empty, like always, and you're left to idly tap your pen against the counter as you wait behind the register for something to do.

Normally you'd go make sure the music was organized properly, or you'd make sure all the instruments on display were in good condition.

But you've already done all that today. Three times.

You let out an exasperated sigh, and wonder briefly who else has been sighing lately.

Finally you've settled for counting the money in the register (again) when the bell above the door jangles and you've finally got a customer.

You put on a smile and head over to him, and ask those standard questions: hi, how are you, looking for anything in particular today, okay, you're welcome.

He turns out to be one of those people that just scowls at you and dismisses your questions as quickly as he can, but you keep up that practiced smile anyway.

Soon, he leaves, heaving bought nothing.

You feel terrible for having bothered him.

About an hour later you're falling asleep at the counter, so you go and check the instruments for a fourth time.

However, you end up sitting on the floor, staring off into space, so you get up and organize the music again instead.

You're feeling pretty down when that bell jangles again, but you put on a smile and go over to your customer.

That smile very soon becomes genuine when you see his blond hair and dark shades.

You greet him cheerfully and shake his hand, and he chokes out a “huh?”

So you laugh a bit, and repeat yourself. “I saw you a while back!”

“What?”

Huh. Hopefully you don't have the wrong guy. “Across the street! The day it rained!”

“Um.”

Wow, maybe you do have the wrong guy. (You really hope not.)

Even so, this guy seems nice. He hasn't tried to push you away or anything yet. “Well, even if you don't remember it, I'm seeing you now!” you say, letting go of the guy's hand. You like to give long handshakes.

He grumbles something in response to you, and you just grin and tell him about how weird he looked. It makes him laugh!

“What? You did!” you squawk defensively. “Don't deny it! Who wears sunglasses in the winter, much less in the rain?”

“I like how they look,” he says. (Yeah, right.) “Simple as that. You're really one to talk with the whole 'weird' thing, what with those huge things you've got on your face.”

Wow, really?

You explain to him about how bad your eyesight is. You have to get new glasses a lot because it seems your eyes are always getting worse, and these frames are always cheap, yet sturdy, so you buy them, even if they're really huge!

What a jerk.

Before you can really tell him much, though, the bell jangles again, and you rush over to greet the new customer.

When you turn back around, the sunglasses guy is gone, and your smile falls into a frown.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is actually extremely short.  
> I have the next few written already, though! The next one's really long, wow. I would have put part of it onto the end of this one, but I couldn't really get them to fit together right.  
> Thank you!

Today was an irritating day.

So, so irritating.

You dared to go to the music store again – God knows why – and hoped you'd come early enough to miss John.

Of course, less than fifteen seconds after you walk inside, there he is, all in your face beaming like an idiot.

“Hey!” he greets cheerfully. “You're back!”

You sigh, and nod.

“Gonna buy anything this time?” he asks.

“Maybe,” you say. He steps to the side a bit, still grinning, and you walk past him over to some equipment: cables and speakers and amps and stuff.

You actually can't afford any of this shit.

So, you heave another sigh and wander around the store aimlessly, finally shuffling back up to the counter with nothing but a ballpoint pen you found near the sheet music. You place it in front of John on the counter, and he laughs.

“Come on,” he says. “You can't get a pen with nothing to write on with it.”

To your surprise he actually takes out a little notebook, black with small musical notes scattered about in the corner of it.

You wonder what else is hiding behind that counter.

You ask how much it is. He says it's free. You ask him why. He says because I like you.

You blush – just a bit – and pay for the pen, taking the notebook and leaving.

You realize you probably should have given him your name.

You consider going back.

It starts to rain, so you don't.

How ridiculous.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! So the last chapter was super short and I do have the next, like, three after it already written, and this one was pretty long! So I chopped it in half and I'll post the other part later this evening.  
> Thank you!

You’re sitting on the bus.

You’re actually on your way to a new museum that opened up nearby.

You… well, ever since John gave you that notebook, you’ve felt like you should write in it.

So you’re going to try and become inspired.

The bus ride is a fairly long one, and you wish it was summer. You’ve always loved going to museums in the summer: however, it’s still that rainy winter.

It stormed last night, and you jotted down some crappy little paragraph describing how the rain and wind sounded. You scribbled it out almost immediately after you finished writing it.

You sigh and hug the book close to you, the pen in your pocket.

-

Once you get to the museum you realize you didn’t think to check the admission fee before you came here. You turn out to be a buck short, and you heave a sigh as you turn to walk away from the counter. As you do, though, the girl behind the desk taps you on the shoulder. “Wait,” you hear. “I’ll… I’ll let you in anyway.”

You turn back around and look at her with surprise. “Why?” you ask. “I don’t have enough money.”

Then you realize: you know her.

She used to work at the register at a coffee shop where you’d go and get a drink every single day. You came at around the same time and she was always the cashier, so you got to know her pretty well.

She smiles that goofy smile of hers and pushes up her glasses a bit. “Don’t tell me you forgot me!”

You smile back at her and shake your head. “Of course not.”

You didn’t realize how much you missed her until now. She’s always so cheery, and no matter how you felt, when you’d go and see her for those few minutes every afternoon your day always became that much better.

She’s beautiful, too. She has long, nice-looking hair and these fairly big, circular glasses that you don’t think would look good on anyone besides her.

You love her eyes.

She smiles wider and laughs. “Get in there before someone catches me letting you in for a whole dollar less than usual.”

You laugh, too.

“Thanks.”

-

Before long, you’re sitting outside the museum in some kind of garden. The plants have little labels in front of them so you can read about them. You’re sitting on a little hill and there’s a breeze which just makes it colder but it’s sunny, so you don’t know what to think.

You look up at the sky, a sky lacking in clouds, and then you take your pen and put it to the paper of your notebook.

You write one sentence:

“He worked in a music store.”


	6. Chapter 6

You started going to that museum every day.

You'd bring your little notebook and pen and you'd sit there, outside, writing. You remembered to bring enough money and you even started considering getting a job there.

Yeah.

Today, though.

You're staring blankly out at the trees and flowers around you, thinking, when you suddenly have a brilliant idea.

You open your notebook and write about a page, but when you turn it, there's nothing left.

You need another notebook!

You sigh, and decide to go get one before you forget your idea.

Almost an hour later you're walking into that music store, expecting to see John, but instead, it's another guy. He looks like he couldn't possibly care less about his job, and it makes you really miss John's cheer.

You sigh and leave the store again, deciding to write the idea somewhere else and come back tomorrow.

-

The next day, you hesitantly go back in to the store, and glance around for John.

To your surprise there's actually no one there at all, not even the guy from yesterday.

So, you stand nervously by the counter, waiting.

Soon, a door in the back of the store opens and John comes barreling out toward you. “Sorry for the wait!” he practically screams. Then he sees that it’s you and he calms down considerably.

“Hey!” he says, straightening himself out a little. “Need something?”

“Yeah,” you respond. “I, uh.” You take out the little notebook, and you hold it up. “I filled this thing up.”

“What, already?” John says. “Wow, okay. You need another?”

You nod, and he tells you to wait here, I’ve got some more behind the register.

So, you stand there, and eventually step up to the counter and wait for him to find it.

“Here!” he says, placing a slightly larger notebook on the table and sliding it across to you. This one is a bit different in not just size but design too. It’s not a spiral notebook – the last one was – but a composition book. It doesn’t have that usual marble pattern on it, though, nor musical notes like the other notebook had. Instead, it has vivid red lines stretching vertically along it, crossed horizontally with blue lines. They’re not thick enough to be plaid, but they’re not terribly thin either.

It’s nice.

You start to pull out some cash to pay for the notebook, but John stops you.

Riiiiight.

It’s free, isn’t it.

“It’s not free, actually,” he says, almost as if he could read your mind.

“Oh,” you say, going to pull out the cash again, only to be stopped once more.

“You gotta tell me your name first,” John says. “That’s the price this time.”

You smile and take the book. “It’s Dave,” you say.

Whatever he says next is something you don’t respond to. You just leave, that bell over the door jangling behind you.


	7. Chapter 7

Your name is John.

For once, you actually sleep late.

You never bother setting an alarm because you go to work in the afternoon, and you always wake up in the morning.

However, you find yourself glancing over groggily at your clock to see that you’re already seventeen minutes late for work.

Oh, shit.

You get up frantically and rush around, getting yourself dressed as quick as you can and hurrying out the door. In your rush you didn’t even think to grab your glasses – how that slipped your mind you’ll never know – and you were waiting at a crosswalk by the time you realized things were so blurry you couldn’t even tell if you were supposed to cross or not.

You take a chance when it seems there’s no cars coming, and when you’re about a third of the way across the street a car comes turning around the corner, very quickly, and almost hits you.

You start running to get across in time and then you just stop, standing on the other side of the street for a few minutes contemplating why you’re such an idiot.

About six frantic minutes later you’re walking through the door to the music store looking like you just got sucked into a lawnmower.

The girl who has the shift before you doesn’t look too happy.

She doesn’t say a word to you – not that she ever does in the first place – and just gathers her things, straightens out her headband, and walks past you with a huff.

You’re quite scared of her, actually.

When she’s annoyed like that her usual silence becomes much more sinister, and she gets so menacing you can almost feel the daggers she’s sure to be glaring at you.

Why she got a job at a shitty music store you’ll never know.

You shudder and hurry to straighten yourself out: looking the way you do you’ll get even less customers than usual.

You wonder why that is. You never really seem to get any customers, but the store makes enough to stay in business. Sometimes you think that maybe you’re just a little too friendly, and your enthusiasm when trying to help people drives them away.

But then you remember Dave, and how you didn’t drive him away.

And, speaking of him, he comes in through that door right after you start sorting out some of the stuff behind the register.

You look up and smile halfheartedly, and he looks fairly concerned at you.

“I saw that girl as I came up to the door,” he says. “What the fuck was her problem?”

You laugh a bit. “She has the shift before me and I'm, like, a half hour late right now.”

“Oh.”

He pauses.

“Is she always so... serious?”

You laugh again. “Yeah, she is. At least when she's working she is. I think her name is Rose.”

“Wow, okay.”

You lean over next to the register, resting your elbows on the surface of the counter and your chin in your hands. “So,” you say. “Gonna buy something else this time?”

Dave smiles at you, and steps up closer toward you, leaning on the edge of the counter directly in front of you. “Nah,” he says quietly. “I just got bored.”

“Well!” you almost squeak. “I can try to be interesting if you want.”

Dave nods with an “I'm sure you can be”, and then sighs. “What if I got a job here?” he says, seemingly absent-mindedly.

You perk up immediately, standing back up straight. “Well, I think that would be great!” you tell him. “Though it can get super boring around here when there's nobody in the store.”

He looks a bit surprised, as if he didn't realize he said that out loud, and then nods. “Sure seems like it. I was thinking earlier about working at that new museum because there's a girl I know there, and since it's new they're sure to have some opening.”

Your smile falls a little when he mentions that girl, and you mentally slap yourself. Of course he has other friends! You're not the only person he knows!

Now that you think about it, he's the only person that you really know around here.

Well, that sure made things depressing.

He shrugs, and you realize you stopped listening to him. “I guess I'll think about it,” he says conclusively.

You really need to work on your attention span.

You laugh nervously and launch off into one of your ramblings to try to compose yourself. “You know,” you begin quickly, “working here isn't actually all that hard! Even though it's boring it's probably because it's so easy! I mean look, the store is so tiny and no one ever comes in so you don't usually have to deal with people and since people don't come in and mess around with stuff so much you don't have to reorganize things and all that so often and my boss is really old so he stays home most of the time and only comes sometimes to check and see that the store hasn't burned down or anything and I think he really trusts me and the other people who work here which I think is really good since well if he didn't trust us then it wouldn't work out too well since he can't be here so often and wow I'm not making much sense am I?!” You pause, and laugh nervously some more, and Dave looks at you like you've completely lost it.

“Wow, uh, yeah, I guess that doesn't sound too bad?” he says unsurely.

You mentally slap yourself again. Way to make things awkward, asshole.

He continues to look at you like you're crazy for a few minutes until he just smiles, heaving a sigh. “You know, another thing I've been debating is moving out.” You decide not to interrupt him or think about anything, and actually listen this time, and he continues. “I live with my brother. He's a total dick, but I worry about him, still. I mean, I guess we have a pretty good relationship? He's just a jerk sometimes.” He sighs again. “He used to actually keep a job, so that's why I don't have one, but lately he doesn't work anymore? I have no idea if he quit, or what, but he just disappears for days on end and I have no idea what he does.” He sighs a third time. “It's kind of stressful.”

After that, he doesn't speak again, and you're trying to think of what to say. Before you can choke out some frantic response to him, though, he laughs weakly. “Sorry,” he tells you. “I've never really told anybody about him like that before, and I guess I just needed to.” He laughs again, and you hear him mutter something to himself under his breath.

“Way to make things awkward, asshole.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's extremely short, sorry about that! I was adding to it earlier but I didn't really like what I was writing, so I stopped it here for the time being.  
> Thank you!

You are a girl.

You’re wondering if you’re going to see him again today.

If you do, that’ll be the third day in a row.

You can’t help but feel nervous: you’ve even practiced what you’re going to say in your head. You want to try to sound friendly. However, whenever you practice these things you always end up completely forgetting them when you’re actually talking, and it all goes to hell.

You really, really can’t help but feel nervous.

It’s such a dumb thing to get nervous over: he comes in, orders the same coffee, then leaves. He doesn’t sit around, he doesn’t get anything else, he doesn’t make small talk with you, no. He just leans, ever so casually, over the counter at the end, waiting for his drink.

Yesterday you got a little distracted while looking at him. How cliché.

Or maybe it’s not so cliché. He is pretty strange.

He was wearing these opaque shades and at first you thought that maybe he was blind or something – silly you – but you were quickly proven wrong about that.

He stands so, so leisurely, like he’s got nowhere to be. The way he was leaning over the counter, it was, it was just so –

The bell over the door pulls you back from your thoughts as a customer comes in, and you absently make his coffee and take his money, tell him to please come again! and then he’s asking you if something’s wrong.

Your eyes snap up to him, and you realize it was that guy from yesterday the whole time!

Weird shades and all.

You shake your head quickly, and, just like usual, all that stuff you practiced saying goes flying out the window. You find yourself reaching out and shaking his hand, introducing yourself.

I’m Jade, you say. Hey, Jade, he says, I’m Dave. Hi, Dave, you say. Are you sure nothing’s wrong, he says. No, I’m fine, you respond. Well, keep it that way, he says. I like your smile, he says.

So then he’s leaving and you’re just standing there wondering if he likes you or something. What a weirdo.

After a moment of thought you just shrug and get back to your work, Dave simply a lingering thing in the back of your mind.


	9. Chapter 9

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“How’s… things?”

“Things?”

“Things.”

“Things are good.”

“Okay.”

“How’s, uh… how’s your things?”

“My things are okay.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah.”

“Keep them that way.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I lost my notebooks.”

“Sucks.”

“I’m pissed.”

“I imagine so.”

“No, I'm really pissed. I wrote a lot of stuff in them.”

“Sorry.”

“No, shut up. It’s not like you did anything.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“God damn it.”

-

“…we should go do something.”

“Like what? I just like talking to you.”

“Haha. I always feel like I’m boring you.”

“You do sometimes, but I like looking at you too.”

“Oh.”

“You’re so dumb.”

“Love you too.”


	10. Chapter 10

Your name is Dave.

You’ve got that new notebook and you’ve written down that wonderful idea you had the other day, so now you can finally relax.

Today, though, you’re looking back over all the stuff you wrote in there, and you hate it.

This is why you didn’t read it before.

You kind of hate yourself for hating yourself so much. It’s true. You hate all the stuff you do: you hate how you act like an idiot when you talk to John, and you hate your writing “skills”, and you hate how dumb you are about your brother, you hate how you didn’t stay in touch with Jade, etc., etc.

And then of course, you hate yourself for hating all that stuff about yourself.

You really think it’ll be an endless cycle: lately you’ve been hating yourself for hating yourself for hating yourself.

Okay, now you’re just confused.

Basically, you don’t exactly like yourself too much, and you think you’re not talented. It kind of sucks. Your people skills suck too. Everything sucks.

So, now that you’ve gotten yourself into this wonderful hateful mood, you’re just going to go for a fucking walk.

Ten minutes later finds you pausing as you pass the music store, glancing in through the window and wondering where John is. You have no clue when exactly his hours there are, so you try and go at the same time every day you go and see him.

You open the door and poke your head inside, scanning around for John, and when you don’t see him in your immediate area you shut the door back and continue your walking down the sidewalk.

It is very unlike most days this winter. It’s actually very sunny and warm, and the clouds drifting across in the sky are being hit by the sunlight just so they cast shadows across the ground.

It’s kind of strange to you, actually.

But there’s a breeze, and it feels nice, so you don’t think you’ll complain too much.

You find yourself wandering to a part of town you’ve never thought to visit. It’s not necessarily a bad part of town, it’s just nothing but little houses and apartment buildings and you’ve never thought much of it.

Everything is fairly silent except the sound of your shoes against the sidewalk as you step along, and you’re actually feeling almost good about everything until you near one little house where there’s something breaking the silence.

You pause, and listen. You can’t hear much, and it’s frustrating. It’s not somebody talking, no; it’s something else. It’s not just raw sound, either. You’re thinking it’s music, and you walk closer to the house and pause when your suspicions are confirmed.

A window on the side of the house you’re standing at is open, and you can hear piano music floating out of it. At first you think nothing of it, and you take another step down the sidewalk, but then you realize you’re hearing someone actually playing the music right now.

You’d thought it was a CD or something.

You pause again and just stand there, listening. It’s nothing you recognize, and you wonder if maybe this person plays original stuff.

That’s cool.

You walk backward a little bit, awkwardly, peering over toward the window. You’re trying to get a good look at whoever is in there without being too creepy, and it’s actually really not working.

The music itself is actually fairly quiet, and at a slow tempo. It’s kind of sad-sounding, but it’s beautiful, and listening to it is making everything seem to have this melancholy feel to you.

You end up sitting on the ground near the window listening to it.

You know it’s sort of weird and creepy, but hey, you’re not the one who left the window wide open.

Sooner than you’d like, whoever is in there stops playing, and you’re left with nothing but a melody faintly playing in your head.

Until you hear that window start to close and you think 'oh, shit, I better move' and then your thoughts are even more jumbled when you hear “well hey, Dave!”

You were in the middle of frantically getting up to step out of sight when you heard that, and you freeze, mid-step, and look over at… John.

He’s got his hands on the window and it’s half closed, but now he’s bending down at what looks like a pretty painful angle to look at you through where it’s still open. He’s got that dumb grin on his face and you’re just about to punch him for scaring the shit out of you like that.

You straighten yourself out and try to be casual, walking up to John’s window and leaning over to his level. “Hey,” you finally respond.

“Wanna come inside?” John asks you, pushing the window back up and leaning over the sill.

“No,” you respond. “This is cool, like some kind of cliché movie where I can’t go in and see you and we have to talk to each other through a tiny, shitty window.”

“It’s like Romeo and Juliet!” John declares. “Well, the whole balcony scene, at least.”

“That was such a lame comparison I’m tempted to just walk away right now and never turn back,” you say.

John sends you a pained look. “How cruel,” he says dramatically. “All this time, I thought you loved me.”

You stand up straight, looking down at him expressionlessly. “You thought wrong, John,” you respond, raising your gaze to look away into the distance. “So, so wrong.”

“But Dave!” John says, reaching up and yanking you back down. “I still love you.”

You heave a sigh. “I refuse to be swayed by you.”

“Maybe you were the one who thought wrong,” John says, pulling you even closer to him. He’s so close you think you can feel his breath on your face. “Or maybe… we were both wrong.”

You don’t respond, and he leans even closer to you. You can feel his bangs on your forehead. “Oh, Dave-senpai,” he whispers, and you burst out laughing.

John laughs too, and he lets go of you. You both laugh like that for a bit, and then you settle down and both lean back over to face each other properly.

“So, wanna come inside?” John asks you again, looking like he’s still about to laugh at you.

“Yeah,” you say this time. “Yeah, I think I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about that last chapter. I see it was a bit confusing, and I kind of meant for it to be!  
> There were no dialog tags, yes. So you can't be sure who was saying what!  
> It was kind of one of those nonlinear things. It's dialogue that is exchanged later in this story!  
> Don't think too much of it.  
> Thanks guys!


	11. Chapter 11

John’s little house is actually kind of nice. No, it’s really not that big, but… still nice. You go in and find yourself in a short little hallway, kind of dim.

The light is burned out, John explains.

Well then.

“So, you play piano,” you offer. “It’s nice.”

John smiles at you. “Yeah, my dad taught me. Lately I’ve been writing my own stuff and it’s really fun.”

“Yeah?” you ask. Maybe he really was playing something original before.

That’s so cool.

“Yeah!” John confirms. “I leave the window open usually because that room is really stuffy, and I hate playing when it’s like that.”

“Wow, okay,” you comment. “I thought maybe you left the window open because you wanted people to, oh, I don’t know, hear your amazing music?”

John waves you off. “Pshh, nooo, I'm not that good.”

You look at him like he’s an idiot. “No, but you really are. You were so good that I stalked your house just to listen to you.”

He laughs. “Yeah, whatever. Are you hungry or something? I can’t think of anything to actually do, so….”

“You could play some more and I could listen,” you suggest. “I could do that all day.”

“I couldn’t!” John practically squeaks. “My wrists can’t take that much playing.”

You sigh. “Fine, I guess I’ll raid your fridge instead.”

At that, he steps aside and points you to the kitchen, and you wander down that dimly-lit hallway until you find a rather cramped kitchen.

You do just as you said and go over to the refrigerator, opening it up and grabbing some stuff out of it. Then you take a bag of Doritos off the top of the fridge and go back to John holding the chips, a Coke, and a little cup of yogurt.

Honestly, you could have done better.

He doesn’t seem to care about what you actually took, so he just shrugs at you and points you around the house. “That way is the living room, that way is my room and my dad’s room,” he says, and you interrupt him here to ask him “you still live with your dad?” to which he responds “um, yeah, why else would he have a room here?”.

He continues after that. “That way is the bathroom and the ladder trapdoor thing that goes up to the attic, and that way in there—“ he points to the door behind you – “is the room with the piano and stuff.”

“Ooh, I wanna see that room,” you say, shoving the food at John and walking in to the piano room.

The window is still open, so the room isn’t all that stuffy, and you look around.

It’s a fairly small room. Right next to the window is a little desk cluttered with papers and an old desk lamp, and it honestly looks like it hasn’t been used in at least five years. On the wall adjacent to the window is an old upright piano, and there’s little sheets of messy handwritten music propped up on it.

It really was original.

The wall opposite the window is lined with cluttered junk: there’s an old-looking bookshelf with lots of sheet music and old books lined up on the shelves, and in front of it there’s even more sheet music in messy stacks. Propped up against the bookshelf is a little case for – you think – a violin, and there’s a little sticky note stuck to it that says nothing but the word “thanks” written in the most spidery handwriting you’ve ever seen.

The light coming in through the window is dusty and dim, but it gives the room a nice natural feel to it.

It makes you notice that there’s not a single outlet in the wall, or even a light on the ceiling. Must be a really, really old room.

“Don’t just shove your stuff at me!” John squawks behind you, pulling you out of your thoughts. He pushes you out of the way – you’ve been standing in the doorway this whole time – and tries to give you back the food.

“John, shut up,” you say, pushing his face away. “I’m basking.”

He swats at you in protest. “Take the fooood,” he whines.

You heave a sigh and finally look over at him, and take the food back. He settles down and just stands next to you, looking all around the room as if he’s only seen it for the first time.

“It’s a really old room,” he says to you. “I like it though, even though it’s stuffy and gets really cold in the winter.”

“I’m lame,” you comment. “I don’t think I could survive in a room that has no electricity like this.”

“It’s not so bad,” John says. “I just focus on playing, and… yeah.”

You nod, not really having anything to add to that.

John walks over to the piano again slowly, and sits at it, putting his fingers gently in place over the keys. Suddenly he turns back to you. “I, uh, I don’t have to play if you don’t—“

You cut him off. “Do you really think I don’t want you to play?”

He smiles at you, and straightens out his music. He’s about to play and you take this opportunity to be a complete dick.

You pry open the Dorito bag, successfully being as loud as you possibly can, and then when you stop and look at him expectantly, he moves to play again. As soon as he does you bite into a chip as obnoxiously loudly as you can, and he turns back around and glares at you. You just smile at him and he snatches your chips.

You actually weren’t expecting that.

“So aggressive,” you say dramatically.

“Whatever,” he responds, to which you put a hand over your chest and gasp.

He just rolls his eyes and turns back to the piano.

You finish that one chip and then stand behind him rather nicely, setting down your Coke and yogurt on the floor.

And then he plays and you don’t think any music you hear after this will ever sound as good as it used to.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for not updating for a little while! I would write little bits of chapters out of order and never finish them and I just... I need to get myself organized.  
> This chapter is kind of short, but I've got some more stuff written that follows this! So I will update again soon.  
> Thank you!

“That was…” you begin, not really knowing how to describe what John’s playing was to you. It was amazing. It was beautiful and it made you feel really great inside, yet it gave you this sad feeling and broke your heart at the same time. It was everything, filling you up and breaking you apart and putting you back together again.

You fucking loved it.

“It was good.”

John looks a little disappointed. “Yeah? ‘Good’?” You hear him muttering about how you were stalking his house earlier just to listen.

“Yeah, ‘good’.”

Wow, way to be a douche, Strider.

John sighs and starts to put his music away, and once he stands up from his little bench, you grab his arms and pull him around so he’s standing directly in front of you. From there you take his hands in yours gently, and pull him very close to you.

He’s blushing furiously, and it gives you this amazingly sick sense of achievement.

“Um?” he begins nervously. “D-Dave? What are you—“

You cut him off by kissing his forehead and spinning around with him a bit. “That last thing you just played,” you say. “I think it would be great to dance to.”

John squeaks nervously. You can hear him gulp, and you almost laugh at how much like a cartoon character he can be sometimes. After a moment of staring at you – you think he’s trying to find your eyes so he can stare into them romantically, but the shades make that kind of impossible – he finally nods, and you decide that this day has just become the best day of your life.

A few minutes of explaining, demonstrating, and tripping over each other’s shoes send you into laughter, but later, you find he’s actually getting it. He’s getting better, and you’re actually really disappointed when he lets go of your hands to step over to that ancient desk in the corner.

“Where you goin’?” you ask, and he turns to you, smiling amusedly. “I’ve got some music over here,” he says, in response. John then digs up a little recorder from amongst all that shit, and starts playing an old-sounding piano piece from it.

“What the fuck is that?” you ask, and you didn’t mean for it to sound like you were so… displeased, but it really doesn’t sound like John’s playing.

“It’s something I wrote a while back and recorded,” he says. “The speaker on this thing is really shitty, I’m sorry about that.”

“Oh,” you respond, and now you feel like a dick.

John simply smiles at you and walks back over, taking your hands ever so gently in his.

You find you really like his hands. They’re kind of small, and they’re really soft.

And those little fingers of his. They’re so nimble, and he laces them with yours easily. You love thinking about how these same fingers can play such beautiful music, and it makes you melt a little inside.

You smile back at him, and lower both of your hands to their respective places.

And then you both dance to that crappy-quality piano music until you start to feel so silly you can’t hold back your laughter.

How ridiculous.

-

Soon after you stop dancing together, you both sit on the floor in the old room, passing the bag of Doritos back and forth while that little thing on the desk continued to play music.

You eat your yogurt and drink your Coke, too. Heh, you even share with him, which makes you feel all fluttery inside.

It makes you realize you really want to kiss John.

About twenty minutes later you both finally get up and throw all the food stuff away, and then you go and flop onto his couch in the living room.

It’s very different from the old room with the piano, and it kind of makes you sad.

-

You spend the next few hours with John just idly talking or watching TV. It's not particularly exciting, and you're constantly dreading the moment when you have to leave.

So, really, it's not the most fun you've ever had.

Just being with John, though, well... that's pretty fucking great.

Unfortunately, as you dreaded, John finally turns off the TV and looks at you sadly.

“It's getting kinda late,” he says. “My dad's gonna be home soon.”

“Yeah,” you force yourself to say in agreement. “Yeah, I should probably leave, shouldn't I?”

John nods slowly, and you sigh and get up from the couch.

You wave at him, and then you're walking out the door, and walking as slowly as you can down the sidewalk.

Before too long you hear piano music coming from the window.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes okay here here is the chapter I need to go lie down

Your name is John, and you have no idea what to think anymore.

Dave coming to your house was a surprise in the first place, but you realize you found it a far more pleasant surprise than it normally would have been.

You’re starting to scare yourself, honestly.

Speaking of Dave, anyway, you’re looking for him right now.

You have no idea where he lives or where he usually goes or if he wakes up this early, but it’s the morning after the day he came to your house. It’s about seven-twenty A.M., and you’re really starting to doubt that Dave is even the type of person to ever consider getting up this early.

However, you continue your idle, aimless walk around town until you come to sudden halt.

Right in front of you on the sidewalk is a brightly-colored… puppet?

That thing almost hit you in the face.

You look up hesitantly – that puppet thing seemed to fall from the sky – and squeak a little when you see another one falling. You step pretty far back and then look back up: they’re all falling from the roof of that apartment building.

You squint, because you thought you saw someone up there, and then you scream a little bit when you see someone almost shoved off the roof by a tallish guy with a… sword?

You step around the strange puppet things and hurry into the nearby apartment building before you can even think about what you’re doing, and after deeming the elevator too slow you run over to the stairs, and go up them as fast as you can.

You get exhausted about four flights up, and mentally kick yourself for getting tired so quickly.

A short while later you finally crash onto the roof and hobble over to where you saw the guy earlier. You scream as Dave comes running past you, and you scream again when that taller guy goes chasing after Dave.

What is going on?

They’re both wielding swords and you have no idea what to do but you’re not going to just leave, so you kind of just stand there awkwardly while you watch them try to kill each other.

But then, upon closer inspection, you notice that the taller guy looks a lot like Dave does.

They seem to pause for a minute and you start to approach them, but then the tall guy pulls out another one of those weird puppets and flings it at Dave. He visibly cringes and steps out of the way of the puppet easily, and then the tall guy throws another puppet at him.

This one’s different, though, and it seems to move on its own.

At this point you really think you’ve seen enough and you turn to leave, but then that tall guy is suddenly in front of you and it’s almost like he teleported or something and you’re so weirded out right now and –

“Do you have a problem?”

You’re actually really scared now.

“I, um, I.”

“Come on, you came up here for a reason. I saw you gawking from the street. Now spit it out.”

You splutter some nonsense and only get more and more nervous until the guy is yanked away from you, and you immediately back away and press yourself against the door back down to the stairwell.

“Dude,” you hear Dave say. “What the fuck was that?”

There isn’t a response, and Dave continues. “Were you trying to scare the shit out of him? Why do you always have to pull that bullshit on people?”

You hear him sigh and then he walks over to you, and you gaze up at him anxiously. He looks almost as if he feels sorry for you, and then he tells you “that’s my asshole of a brother over there” and things are starting to make just a little bit of sense now, at least.

“Oh,” you squeak, and you feel around behind you for the handle of the door, and Dave honestly looks disappointed.

“Wh…” you begin, pausing with the door. “Why were you trying to kill each other?”

Dave heaves another sigh. “I’m not even going to try to explain,” he says, sounding extremely exasperated. “Basically my brother’s a dick and I’m a dick right back at him.”

“Oh,” you choke out again, and then you wrench the door open and back into the stairwell a little bit.

“Sorry,” you hear Dave mutter quietly, and you want to ask him why he’s sorry, but then that tall guy standing back behind him a ways flinches a little, and you swear he wants to kill you.

So you just wave at Dave awkwardly and swing the door shut, hurrying down the stairs as fast as your legs can take you.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello! Sorry for not updating for a few days, but I'm here now with a very long chapter.  
> Thank you!

You’re Dave, and you’re waking up from a very long nap.

You got pissed at your bro for freaking John out, so you figured you should just go to sleep before you try to do something stupid. (You’ve really had to learn to just let things go with him.)  
So, you’ve woken up several hours later to find that your brother is gone, and it’s late afternoon, and you’re starving.

Rather than microwaving some random shit from the fridge like you usually do, you decide to go out and get something that’s actually decent for once. Okay, well, maybe not all that decent, but maybe you’ll get a sandwich from Subway or something. That’s decent enough.

While you’re out you can swing by the music store and see if John’s there.

It’s actually cold today, so you pull on this really awesome fuzzy coat you bought for yourself a while back, in the summer when it was on clearance. You haven’t really gotten the chance to wear it yet because it’s been so mild this winter, but you’re happy to be able to wear it today.

You straighten out your shades, and hurry out of your apartment, then out of the building, and down the street. You really do wind up going to a Subway, and you get a pretty huge sub with lots of random shit on it. You like to try new stuff, so every time you get a sandwich from here you tend to have them put things on it that quite literally turns some heads.

After you get your sub you walk out down toward that crosswalk where you first saw John, and you cross quickly, taking a generous bite out of your sandwich as you go.

You push into the music store several seconds later, and take another huge bite of your sandwich. For a second you don’t see anybody, and then John pops up from behind the register, and you wave at him.

You ask him “’sup?” with a mouthful of sandwich, and he starts laughing at you.

“What?” you say defensively, your voice still muffled with the food. “I’m hungry.”

He waves you off, still chuckling a bit. “You look like an idiot,” he says. “What with your huge coat, shades, and disgusting sandwich.”

You shoot him an extremely pained look, and cross your arms – pausing only to take another bite of your sandwich. “I’ll have you know,” you say, “that I got straight-As in sixth grade for a whole semester.”

John starts laughing again, and you gulp down your latest sandwich bite and grin at him. He smiles back at you, looking like he’s trying not to laugh more, and you love it.

You glance down at your sandwich, and hold it out to John. “Want some?” you ask him. “It’s got, um.” You squint at it. “Tomato, provolone, mayo, olive, I think mustard? And some weird pickle shit, I don’t even know what that is. Aaand, um, onion? Maybe? I don’t even know anymore.” You pause and squint at the sandwich. “Is that bacon?”

John simply pulls a face at you. “What kind of sandwich is that? No, I don’t want any.”

You smile at him. “More for me, then.”

“Whatever,” he says, and he’s holding back a grin. You can tell.

“Hey, I paid money for this,” you say, waving the sandwich a little bit. “Good, hard-earned money that I didn’t work a single hour for.”

“Oh yeah?” John says, and you can hear the laughter in his voice. “Sounds like you live such a hard life.”

“Absolutely,” you respond. “But I get paid so much.”

“Well, good for you,” John says, and you can see his smile slowly fade from his face. There's a few moments of near-silence between the both of you as you simply stand there and munch on what's left of your sandwich, and you notice that John starts to actually look kind of sad.

Out of nowhere, too. He was just standing there, idly wiping some stuff off the surface of the counter while you ate, and you just saw his smile very slowly just... fall.

The look in his eyes made you sad, too.

You don't want to seem like a weirdo by asking him what was wrong, since he hasn't really expressed any clear upset, so you just stand there, eating like an idiot.

And then John heaves a sigh and leans over the counter and looks so fucking miserable that you actually lower the sub from your face and ask him what's wrong.

“It's,” he begins, and he really looks like he's torn between actually telling you, and lying about everything being “fine”.

“It's nothing,” he says finally. “I'm fine.”

You knew he'd say that.

You decide not to push the matter, so you just shrug and finish off your sandwich.

You stand there, fiddling with the zipper on your super fluffy coat, and John doesn't speak again, and you don't speak again, and you're both just standing there avoiding eye contact and being awkwardly silent.

After what feels like almost ten minutes, John finally speaks up. “Sorry,” he says, and then he doesn't speak again for another few minutes. “It's just... stuff. That I have. Right now.”

You nod slowly. “Okay.”

“I'm glad you come here so often,” he says, seemingly trying to cheer himself back up. “You... well, no one else usually even talks to me these days, and it's just... really, really nice of you.”

He honestly sounds like he's about to cry right now, and you're worried that maybe he really does have some serious problem.

“I don't see why,” you begin, and he looks up at you curiously. “I don't see why people don't talk to you,” you continue, and he smiles a little bit. “Your appearance alone is thought-provoking enough, so it seems people would at least find you interesting. Not to mention you're one of the only people around here who isn't a total dick.”

John laughs a short, quiet laugh, and then he smiles at you genuinely. “Yeah, maybe.”

He continues smiling for a little bit, and you're both caught in that silence again.

Once more he's the first to speak up.

“What's with you and your brother?”

You cringe. “I told you already: I don't want to try to explain it.”

“Okay, okay,” John says, almost defensively. “I just want to know why you were both trying to kill each other, if that’s not a problem.”

You shake your head. “It’s not a big deal. Don’t worry about it.”

“Fine.”

There’s that awkward silence, and you’re starting to think that maybe John doesn’t like you as much as you thought.

“Wanna help me sort out some junk in the back room?” John asks you suddenly, and you shrug.

“Sure.”

He waves you over back to a little door in the back of the store, and he has to push really hard to open it. “It sticks a lot,” he explains to you, and then you both go inside and you’re standing in the dark.

John flips a light switch and a bare bulb on the ceiling flickers on. You’re both standing in an incredibly cramped room full of old music equipment. Some of it’s damaged: dented, bent, broken, missing little parts. Some of it’s just old.

The room has that old dusty kind of smell to it, and you’re trying not to sneeze.

“Why do we have to sort this stuff?” you ask. “It’s just junk.”

“Well,” John begins, and he actually looks at a loss. “Well, I thought I had a reason, but I think it’s just because I have nothing else to do.”

“Do you come in here every day?” you ask, looking around. It wouldn’t be too unbelievable, considering how much stuff there was piled everywhere. There were stacks of old music, too, that you saw were partially alphabetized already.

“Most days, yeah,” John answers. “I can probably count the numbers of customers I’ve ever gotten on my fingers. No one ever seems to come here when I’m working. So I finish doing stuff out there and then I come in here, and since no one ever comes in I don’t have to worry about missing anyone….”

“That’s really depressing,” you say.

“Yeah,” John agrees, but then he grins at you. “Nowadays, though, I have you that I have to worry about.”

You grin back, and then John bends over to pick up a tangled mess of cables. “Can you untangle these?” he asks you, turning around and handing it to you. You sigh, and nod, finding a small spot on the floor to sit down and work in.

John grabs a flute from somewhere and sits in front of you, pressing at the keys and then pulling out the smallest screwdriver – you think it’s a screwdriver, anyway – you’ve ever seen. He starts tightening little tiny screws on the instrument, and you just shake your head and go back to tugging at the wires you’re holding.

“Why can’t it be like on TV?” you say, mostly to yourself. “Where you pull just the right cord and all the other ones magically untangle themselves.”

You hear John laugh quietly after you say that, and you smile to yourself.

A short while later john has a small pile of assorted instruments next to him that he’s been fixing up, and you’re still not done with your horrible tangle of wires. You’ve untangled a few of the shorter ones and put them aside, but the rest is getting increasingly more frustrating as you go and you’re really just about to put it down and leave.

Eventually you really do just set it to the side, and heave an exasperated sigh. “I’m done,” you declare. “I don’t know what asshole tangled that shit up in the first place, but I can’t do it.”

John laughs – he laughs at you a lot, doesn’t he? – and holds out his hand. “Give it here,” he tells you, and you gladly hand over the offensive ball of wires.

About eight minutes later John’s untangled the whole thing, and you almost want to punch him for being so nimble with his fingers.

“Maybe you should just put the music in order,” he says, and you just know he’s holding back a laugh.

So, for the next few hours, you keep working with John. You end up sorting out the old sheet music for the entire time, and you actually finish most of it, which satisfies you for the moment. John found a few more horrible cable monstrosities, and he untangled those, too, and you still wanted to punch him.

Putting sheet music in alphabetical order is pretty dull, but being with John makes it a lot better.

Yeah.

Now, though, you’re starting to cough a lot from the old dust and stuff in the room, and John suggests that he and you ought to go back out into the store soon anyway. You nod and hurry out of there as soon as he says that, and he follows you a few minutes later.

“That was one of the most boring ways I’ve ever spent three hours,” you comment to him.

“Come on, it wasn’t so bad,” he tells you, and you nod a very small nod in agreement, hoping he won’t notice too much.

“Now tell me what the deal is with your brother,” he demands a few minutes later, once you’re both nice and awkward again. You sigh.

“Dude, can you stop? I told you: we’re just dicks to each other.”

“Yeah, and you try to murder each other with swords. And apparently puppets.”

You cringe at the mention of the puppets. “Yeah? And?”

“Well, that’s pretty weird.”

You groan and try to figure out how to shut John up about this. If you lie about it, maybe he’ll just take the bullshit and let it go?

It’s worth a shot.

-

You actually stay with John until his shift is over, and by then you’re hungry again. “Can I go get another sandwich?” you ask him, and he pulls a face.

“Eugh. No, not unless it’s actually normal.”

You pout. “Why? Don’t you like how unique I am?”

He laughs. “You’re just weird to me.”

You pout some more, and he pats your arm awkwardly. “There, there,” he says even more awkwardly.

“Where?” you ask him, managing to sound like you’re about to cry. “Where, John?”

“I don’t know,” he whispers. “I just don’t know.”

“We could totally be actors.”

John nods. “We really could.”

“Let’s do it. Steal a car or something, drive right off to Hollywood. We could pass ourselves off as foreign actors who just aren’t well-known in the U.S. or something.”

“You’re a moron.”

“Shut up, it was an okay idea.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“Can you tell I’m glaring at you through my shades?”

John squints at you. “No,” he says, looking severely unimpressed with you. “Not at all.”

“What if I got one of those metallic Sharpies and drew eyes on the front of my shades?”

“Oh, my God. That would be terrifying.”

This time, it’s you who’s laughing.

-

About a half hour later you do indeed have another “disgusting” sandwich, and John has what he’s deemed a “normal” sandwich. You’re both heading back toward your apartment because John was asking about it, and you figure there’s no harm in showing him the place, especially if your brother isn’t there (which he’s most likely not).

“I need new shoes,” John comments, mostly to himself, you think. “These are all worn out and I can’t lace them all the way anymore because the aglets on the laces are gone.”

“What the fuck is an aglet?”

John looks up at you like you’re an idiot. “The plastic thing on your shoelace.”

“What plastic thing?”

“On the end!”

“End of what?”

“The shoelace!”

“What?”

John facepalms. “Never mind.”

You shrug, and focus on eating your sandwich, and once you get to your apartment building, you both just stand in front of it.

“Why don’t you go in?” John asks you.

“Because I make it the goal of every day of my life to be as much of a dick to you as I possibly can.”

John shoves you, and then pushes past you into the building. You follow him, and when you drag him past the elevators he protests. You continue dragging him up the stairs, all the way to the top floor.

“And we couldn’t take an elevator… why?” John asks you.

“I already told you: trying to be a dick.”

Not too long later you’re unlocking the door to your apartment and John is angrily eating his sandwich. He’s doing that pointedly at you; staring at you intensely while he takes these huge bites.

It all comes as being extremely funny to you, and you just laugh and shove him inside.

“It’s so cluttered in here,” John comments quickly. “Those puppets are everywhere.”

You shudder. “Don’t remind me.”

You show him around: pointing him down the little hallway and identifying all the rooms, and shoving him into the kitchen for a few seconds. You finish by flopping down onto the couch and pulling him down with you, and he sits next to you. You scarf down the rest of your sandwich (he finished his a long time ago) and pull him close to you, putting your arm around him.

“What?” he asks, looking up at you.

“Hey,” you respond simply.

“…hey,” he almost whispers.

You smile at him, and he looks away from you.

“Hey, Dave?” he asks quietly, still not looking at you. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Nah.”

“Oh. Well, well, uh, do you have a b—“

“Nope.”

“Oh.”

“Why, are you interested?”

This causes John to look back up at you, panicked.

“O-of course not!” he squeaks, and he actually sounds pretty unsure of himself to you.

You laugh. “I’m joking, don’t worry.”

He sighs, and looks away from you again. You pull him closer and he snuggles up to you, and you smile. “What about you?” you ask.

“No,” he responds simply. “I’m all alone here.”

“Valentine’s Day must suck for you.”

He shoots you a funny look. “It must for you, too!”

You smirk. “That’s where you’re wrong. I have the best Valentine’s Days ever.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, I buy myself a fuckton of chocolate and shit and I’m good to go. I am my own valentine.”

John laughs. “That’s certainly a way to do things.”

“Someday, I’m gonna go back in time,” you tell John. “I’m gonna figure it out, and for Valentine’s Day I’m going to go and be with my past self. Have some nice weird selfcest makeouts.”

“I can see why you’re single,” John responds, and you feign severe hurt.

“Your words hurt me,” you say. “So much.”

“No, seriously though! I don’t see anybody tolerating you enough to actually date you.”

“But you tolerate me.”

John seems to pause a little bit. “Yeah, but… I can only tolerate so much.”

-

You spend a lot of time like that: just sitting with each other and talking, talking, talking the time away. You talk about dumb stuff: you add to your little become-actors-and-show-up-in-Hollywood idea, and John laughs; John tells you about a time his shoe got caught in an escalator and they had to call for help (it took a half hour to get him out), and you laugh; and you’re both just talking about the stupidest things and laughing at each other. You both fall asleep like that: you think John fell asleep in the middle of a sentence, but you’re too tired to remember.

You wake up in the dead of night and find yourself freezing cold, probably because John fell off the couch and onto the floor at some point. The idiot didn’t even wake up, and you hold back a laugh.

You get up quietly and wander back to your room. There you dig around for a big fuzzy blanket – you know you have one, it’s pretty fucking amazing – and when you find it, you get shocked so badly you’re sure your hair is standing on end.

Damn static.

You shake your head and grab the blanket, hurrying back out to John as quietly as you can. When you get back to him, you don’t bother waking him up, or trying to move him. You just lie on the floor next to him, put the blanket around the both of you, and hug him close to you again.

You hear him sigh in his sleep, and he cuddles up to you, and you can’t help but grin to yourself.

Eventually, you fall back into a fairly strange half-asleep state; one where you wake up about every five minutes and panic until you look over and see John still with you.

It’s kind of annoying, honestly.

After a while you can’t actually get back to sleep, so you sit up – cautiously pulling John with you – and scoot back so you’re sitting up against the couch. Then you reach up and grab the remote, and turn on the TV.

The volume is deafening, and you panic as you desperately turn it down. Once you finally look over at John, you see he’s still asleep, and you wonder if it’s even possible to wake him up.

You think you’re gonna find out.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness.  
> Okay, um, last Friday, the 15th, last day I updated, my computer actually died. Like, the hard drive is so messed up I've lost all of my files. So, now I'm stuck using my school computer here until I get a new hard drive and a new copy of Windows.  
> It's quite the inconvenience losing all of my stuff like that, but fortunately this fic here wasn't lost at all! I write in it while I'm at school a lot so I actually had a current version of it saved on three different devices.  
> So don't worry about that! Just letting you know that I'll probably be kind of slow about updating and stuff while I'm dealing with all of this computer junk.  
> Thanks for all the comments!! They make me so happy, oh my gosh!  
> Just remember guys. Back up your stuff!!  
> Heh. Thanks!

It’s almost an hour later. You’re Dave, and so far you’ve pretty much discovered that John is almost impossible to wake up.

You’ve turned the TV back up, you’ve smacked him, you’ve jabbed him and poked him, you’ve dragged him around on the floor, you’ve pulled his hair and you’ve dragged him into your room and blasted music at him. You’ve practically tackled him and you’ve put ice cubes down his shirt – they’re still there, by the way – and you’ve screamed at him and you’ve thrown stuff at him and at this point you’re giving up.

He’s probably going to be really bruised and battered in the morning, anyway, so you figure you had to stop soon already.

Poor John.

Seriously, though. This is _unnatural_. Who sleeps _this_ deeply?

Maybe it’s like in the Sleeping Beauty movie and he won’t wake up until you kiss him.

…oh.

You hurriedly push that thought out of your mind and just sit there on the floor next to him, watching him sleep. Before too long, though, let’s face it – that gets boring, and you turn the TV back on.

The show that’s on is some dumb soap you’ve never heard of before. Some short angry guy is really upset over this girl with red glasses? You don’t even know.

You decide to change the channel before everyone starts making out and crying and stuff.

You keep switching around through the channels until you find some old cartoon you haven’t seen in years.

While it plays you look over at John, who’s still sleeping next to you, and you’re reminded of how much you really want to kiss him.

Really, you’re quite unsure of yourself right now.

You figure he didn’t wake up from all that other shit, so if you go so far as to kiss him, well… surely he won’t wake up…?

You sigh and turn back away from him, but then you can’t help yourself.

You look back over at John, and you pull him close to you. Then you press your lips to his, just for a moment, and it’s really, _really_ amazing.

But then he actually _stirs_ and you’re still kissing him and you don’t know what to do and he’s _actually pulling you closer_ and you just—

_How_ did this wake him up?

There is a moment when part of you just accepts this and keeps kissing him while the other part freaks out, but before too long you push him away and scoot yourself back about eight feet away from him.

Turns out yeah, he’s actually awake, and he’s staring at you like he just had a religious experience.

“I, uh, I,” you begin. “I’m. There’s ice cubes down your shirt,” you splutter out finally, pointing at him.

“What?” he squeaks, twisting around and trying to reach up the back of his shirt. “Why? Get them out!!”

You smile a little and shake your head. “Nah, this is kinda funny.”

“You’re a jerk, Dave,” John says, managing to get out the ice and throw it at you. You dodge it easily, and John crosses his arms with a huff. It actually really seems like that whole kiss thing didn’t even happen, and you’re really glad for that.

“I’m keeping this blanket,” John continues, taking your nice fuzzy blanket and wrapping it tightly around himself. “Since you put ice in my shirt.”

“Oh, _hell_ no.” You shake your head disapprovingly at him. “Not that blanket. Not cool.”

“Whatever, Dave, I’m keeping it,” he continues, and you frown. 

“Then I’ll never take my shades off for you.”

Now, _this_ gets John’s attention. “What?” he asks, slowly emerging from the blanket. “Are they that important? Is the blanket that important?”

“Oh yes,” you say seriously.

After a moment John throws the blanket at you, and you laugh and quickly get under it. When you don’t make any move to take off your shades, John pouts. “Take them off, Dave!” he whines, and you laugh some more.

“I didn’t say I’d take them off _now_.”

John huffs and scoots over to you. “Then move over. I’m cold.”

You let him under your amazing blanket, and you’re both snuggled up together like you were before.

You really are glad it’s like that kiss never happened, because you’re starting to think it’s better it didn’t.


	16. Chapter 16

You’re sitting in a cheap coffee place.

You’re… someone. You don’t do this kind of shit often. Sitting like this. You’ve got some kind of coffee sitting in front of you, but you’re ignoring it, simply sitting and thinking.

It’s weird, how you’re doing this right now.

You’re not thinking about much. Mostly about some pretty dumb stuff you never take the time to dwell on. Mostly Dave.

You worry about him. A lot. Of course, you’ve only ever told him this once, and you don’t think he even remembers it. You’re not about to remind him about it, either, though, and that kind of makes you sad.

Though you’d never admit that.

Obviously, you’re the kind of guy who keeps his thoughts to himself most of the time. Especially these stupid sappy nostalgic thoughts. You don’t like to talk about those.

You can still remember it. That one time you told Dave that you worry about him. You told him lots of other things, too, but… they’re less vivid in your mind.

It wasn’t special. It wasn’t a big deal. You just started talking to him, and you didn’t realize how far your ramblings had drifted until he fell asleep and you came back to yourself.

Even then, you still kept talking.

It was years ago. Dave was, like, two. You’re his brother, and you were stuck with him: just you and Dave.

It’s strange how much he’s changed, honestly. He used to tell you all about these crazy things he was gonna do, all the impossible stuff he believed in. You helped him with his music stuff, and he told you about how he tried writing poems sometimes even though he hated how they turned out.

Nowadays, though? He seems so irritated all the time, and you both do nothing but fight. He’s kind of turning into you, what with the whole never-talking-about-your-thoughts things. It’s not quite like you don’t even know him anymore, but he’s so independent from you now you’re not sure what to do with yourself.

Well, this sounds more depressing than it actually is, doesn’t it?

Whatever.

As a matter of fact, you’re kind of avoiding him right now. Last you saw him some kid showed up while you were fighting on the roof, and Dave got so fucking _pissed_ at you for freaking him out that you _really_ don’t want to go back there for a few days.

You don’t think he knows how much he means to you.

You sigh and try some of the weird coffee shit you apparently ordered. It’s bitter, and the taste lingers in your mouth, distracting you, but you can’t bring yourself to get up and go get sugar. So you settle for staring at it, idly stirring it with a spoon and listening to the sound of the metal against the sides of the mug.

It’s a lonely sound, when everything else is silent and your thoughts are so melancholy.

It’s dumb, you think. Taking so much time to just sit here and be gloomy. But hey, gloomy is a thing that you are. It’s kind of always been a thing. Gloomy. Yeah, you’re pretty fucking gloomy.

You really wish you could just sit down and talk to Dave. That’s always been something you wish you could do, but the two of you just never. Ever. Talk. Not even about important things that _need_ to be talked about. No, you both always just take your issues to the roof and argue while you try to kill each other.

It sucks.

You have all this shit you want to say to him. You just want Dave to shut up for five minutes and let you _talk_ without things being awkward or weird or just out of character for you in general. You wish you could tell him that you worry about him, that you want him to be happy. You wish you could tell him that you love how he used to talk about all the impossible things he wanted to do someday, and how the way he said them made them seem like he was gonna make them possible. You want to tell him how much he means to you, how happy he did (and still does, really) make you. Fuck, you just want to tell him that you love him, but you can’t even do that anymore.

Yeah.

You really do love him.

-

Eventually you leave the weird coffee place – weird coffee itself being left practically untouched on your table – and you walk along the dark street, the lonely chill of the wind blowing right into you. Great.

You’re tired, you’re so fucking tired.

You decide to – very slowly, mind you – make your way back to the apartment, and hope Dave is asleep. You don’t want to get into some dumb fight over whatever this late when you’re this exhausted.

Really, though, you just feel tired in general. God. It’s like you can’t even bring yourself to get up in the morning these days.

You really need to find yourself some friends.

You used to have a few friends, yeah. But you’ve completely lost touch with them at this point.

God, you miss them.

One in particular comes to mind, though, while you’re walking along and thinking. He wore green a lot. He was also an idiot. He loved movies. _Really_ loved movies. And he had this messy dark hair that just _never_ seemed to cooperate with him and sometimes he would ramble on and say the _craziest_ phrases and –

You hope he’s not dead or anything.

You decide to push those depressing thoughts about your friends aside for the moment and keep walking until you see your apartment building. You heave a sigh when you finally walk inside, really hoping you won’t have to deal with any shit from Dave tonight.

-

“I worry about you.

“I worry about you a lot.

“It’s hard, you know, since you’re so little.

“You always talk about these impossible things you wanna do, Dave, and it’s so cool to listen to. Makes me feel like you just might do them someday. It’s like you give me this weird hope. It’s nice, and I just know you’re gonna succeed. And you’re gonna have lots of friends, and just… damn, it’s gonna be so much better than what I had. I was kinda a douche, though. Still am, I guess.

“Don’t let anybody tell you what you can and can’t do, either, Dave, don’t let them, because I want you to be happy.

“…fuck, I can’t believe I’m saying all this right now. You’re not even gonna remember.

“Just don’t let assholes get you down and shit. Don’t make me worry about you more than I already do, because then I’m gonna stress the fuck out and then we’re _both_ gonna be upset and it’ll all go to hell.

“Well shit. You just fell asleep anyway.

“…I’m always gonna worry about you, Dave. I love you. Yeah.

“Yeah.

“I love you.”

-

“I hate you so fucking much.”

Apparently, you’re going to get shit from Dave tonight.  
You’re finally back in your actual apartment, and Dave is already on you.  
You sigh. You turn. You glare at him.

“What.”

“The bullshit with John earlier.”

“Who?”

“The kid you scared the shit out of earlier on the roof!”

You groan. He’s _still_ pissed about that?

“Oh. Him. And?”

“I’m just,” Dave begins, and you can tell he’s going to try to make this hurt. “I'm so sick of your shit. Like, I’m really, _really_ fucking sick of it. It’s like you’re avoiding me these days, and then when you’re actually around you’re just being an asshole.” He sighs, and pauses to rub his head a bit. “You need to get yourself together. I know you have problems. It’s kind of obvious, and I’m tired of you taking your shit out on me.”

Wow.

You really don’t need this right now.

So, you just sigh and try to push past Dave, but he grabs your arm.

“Don’t walk away from me this time. I’m serious. I want you to get your act together.”

You sigh again and turn to him. It’s honestly kind of scaring you, how it almost seems like the roles between you two are reversed.

“You’re sick of me, huh.”

Dave just looks at you, waiting for you to continue, and you sigh for a third time.

“I’m sick of me too, honestly. Don’t think I’m not tired of my own shit. I really fucking am. Now leave me alone.”

This time he doesn’t protest, but if anything you probably just made things worse.

Thing is, you’re tired, you’re just _so fucking tired_ , and you just want to go to sleep.

So you do, and you almost swear that at some point when you wake up in the middle of the night, you hear Dave crying in his room.

It breaks your heart, but you force yourself to let him be and go back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ughghughh. This chapter was really dumb, sorry. My writing ability has been pretty awful all this week.  
> Bear with me. I'm trying to figure out where even I want to go with this.  
> I'll redeem myself in the morning: I've got a little more written and I think it's not so bad.  
> Thanks.


	17. Chapter 17

You’re Dave, and when you wake up, your brother is gone. As usual.

You really, really need to talk to him soon. Like, seriously talk with him about all this shit. You honestly think that most of the issues here are due to lack of communication! Yeah!

How you see it, really, is just that he’s trying to forget about you or something. It’s like he doesn’t want to bother worrying about you anymore, and all he wants is for you to get a job and get out of his life. And that hurts, because you don’t really have anybody else to turn to – not that you have anyone in the first place nowadays, really – when you’re upset and stuff.

Yeah. So you’re gonna have to talk to him and clear this stuff up.

Anyway. While you’re thinking, your mind wanders to other things, and you decide: you’re gonna tell him. John.

Yeah, you’re totally gonna do it.

You’re pacing around in front of the couch, talking to yourself. You keep telling yourself that _yeah_ , you’re going to talk to John! _Yeah_ , you’re gonna tell him!!

After he left, the day you kissed him and stuff, you sat there in thought for a little while and finally came to the conclusion that: there’s no use denying it, you have some kind of crush on him.

Which is really dumb, because you’ve never really… _crushed_ on people. It’s such a girly, cheesy thing to do. Nope. Not you!

Oh, wait, there’s the denial again.

Anyway, so you’ve finally gotten over yourself and decided that you like him. And now you’re pacing around telling yourself that you’ve gotta tell him before it’s too late and he finds a girlfriend or dies or something.

God, you’re really fidgety today.

It’s all because this is a bunch of _bullshit_. You’re not the _type_ to _crush_ on people, and you certainly don’t get nervous over it and fidget and pace and all this shit. It’s so out of character for you you’re going to break something if things don’t change. Fast.

Which is when you decided you’re gonna tell John so then you can just have an awesome boyfriend and quit being all girly and smitten or some shit.

Jesus, what’s with all the _fidgeting_?

You’re debating whether to go off and tell him right now. Sure, he’s at work, and _sure_ this would be horribly sudden, but come on. The getting a girlfriend and dying thing. It could happen any time.

Shit. You need to calm down. Seriously.

You don’t even think you could bring yourself to say it, anyway…! What, are you just gonna go up and be all “hey there John. Just wanted to tell you that I'm kind of in love with you even though I only met you like a month and a half ago. Yeah okay thanks. I’ll show myself out now.”

Actually, that kind of seems like something you’d do. At least right now, you think.

Might as well.

-

Your name is John.

You’ve been having a pretty uneventful day, actually. It’s not too long after you stayed at Dave’s, and you haven’t thought all that much about what you did there. You don’t remember much, anyway, because you were really sleepy and stuff. There was some cheesy soap on TV though, you remember that.

You’re at work, and as usual, Dave shows up around the middle of your shift. He doesn’t have a disgusting sandwich, this time, thank God, and you smile at him when he comes in.

But then you suddenly notice about a billion things at once and it makes you gasp a little, honestly.

It’s a lot of Dave things.

You notice how he tilts his head ever so slightly to the side when he smiles. You notice his posture, and how whenever he heaves a sigh he seems to slouch just that much more. You notice how he seems really expressionless at first, but then you see how he actually just looks really at ease. You notice all this shit, and you realize you really, _really_ like it.

Fuck.

You take in every little movement he makes when he walks over to the counter. You see how he stops and shifts his weight before leaning over and resting his arms on the surface of the counter, and how he shifts a little more and leans just a bit forward toward you when he finally settles in that position. You can tell he’s not quite looking up at you yet, and he pushes up his shades and brushes his hair out of his face before shifting ever so slightly again to look up at you.

And you fucking _die_ inside.

“Oh.”

He gives you a funny look. “’Oh’, what?”

“Oh!” you squeak. “Nothing. N-nothing.”

He smirks, and you die a little more. “What’s got you so distracted, John?”

The way he says your name. Oh, _shit_.

“Nngh. Nothing.”

He laughs again, and you cringe a bit. Just his voice in general. It’s unbearable.

“Ohhh, I get it now,” he says. His smirk widens, and he leans closer to you.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck _fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck_ –

“So I’m _that_ attractive, huh? I’m not surprised. It’s kind of a Strider thing.”

He leans even closer to you, and there goes that smirk again, getting wider. “But you’re not so bad-lookin’ yourself, there, Johnny boy.”

At this point you wind up hyperventilating and ducking behind the counter, crouching back there like somebody was trying to jump across the counter and attack you. It’s a bit much, but you really _cannot_ take this stuff he’s doing right now. You hear an “oh, shit!” from Dave, and he comes hurrying around and kneeling in front of you.

“You okay?” he asks. “Did I freak you out? Shit, I shouldn’t have done that.”

You just splutter a bit of nonsense until you apparently go ashen, based on Dave’s frantic description as he continues to babble to you. Then he hugs you and pulls you up so you’re standing again, and you’re actually leaning on him for support, and it’s not so bad, being close to him like this, yeah, but you’re starting to feel really dizzy, like, _really_ dizzy….

Suddenly, though, you come back to yourself, and finally look up and meet Dave’s eyes.

“You okay there?” he asks. “You looked pretty out of it for a second.”

“You’re just so intoxicating,” you mutter, and you swear you feel him flinch.

“That’s, uh, that’s nice, John,” he says nervously. “Whatever you just said.

“Anyway, I actually came here because I wanted to tell you something.”

You swear your heart stops for a moment. “Yeah?”

“Um.”

He looks pretty nervous. Oh. Goodness.

“Well, I, I just, I know I just met you not too long ago, and I don’t even know your last name – shit, I really _don’t_ know your last name – but hey, I really, uh, I really….”

He pauses, and you really feel like he’s about to start hyperventilating and faint or something.

“I really… fuck, I can’t do this… really, um.”

The next few things he says are so quiet you can barely hear them, and so you’re really convinced you heard them wrong.

“I like you, John.

“No, wait, fuck. I think I might love you.

“I would, uh, say some other stuff, too, but fuck, I think I’m gonna put myself into cardiac arrest here.”

You have, um.

You have no idea how to respond to this.

“Like, um, like how?” you wind up stuttering, finding yourself moving ever so closer to Dave.

As if you didn’t already know.

“Like I want to sit around and watch dumb movies with you how. Um. Like I want to show you my shitty raps while we hang out in my messy cave of a room under my blanket how. Like I want to do all this stuff with you, John, but have it just feel like it means so much more than it seems it would how. Mmhmm. Like I want to be with you forever how.”

That was strikingly poetic of him.

You still don’t know how to respond, even less so now than before.

So you just kind of stand there, in silence, staring at him. Then you get an idea, and you reach up, and gently take hold of his shades, pulling them off his face slowly.

He looks right at you, and for the first time you can actually meet his gaze, and you just stand there, looking right at him.

Then you take the opportunity to yank him over and kiss him. You wrap your arms around him after a few seconds, and he doesn’t even flinch when his shades clatter on the floor.

It’s nice.

It’s really, really nice.

Yeah.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UGH I HAVEN'T UPDATED THIS IN FOREVER GROANS  
> I actually had, like, three chapters written for almost this whole week I was inactive? But I really wasn't happy with them and the first of them wasn't even really finished and I just asjfawleifjasflkmxc,vj  
> Writers' block is very not fun.  
> Anyway, I'm here with some stuff I threw together earlier today.  
> Thank you!

Hey.

You did it.

You’re Dave, yeah, and you actually _told_ him. And you’re, like, 95% sure John feels the same.

You actually doubted yourself for a bit there. You _did_ have some things in mind to say before you got here, but then when you went to say them, you just kind of… didn’t.

But hey. You could’ve done a lot worse.

You hug John tightly and kiss his cheek, then you step back from behind the register because there really isn’t much room back there. You go back to where you were before, leaning over the counter and looking at John. He seems pretty happy that he can actually meet your gaze now, and it almost makes you laugh because that honestly sounds like a dumb thing to think about.

You both just kind of stay like that for a little bit, standing with each other and just feeling generally pleasant. But then an actual customer comes in, and John rushes off to greet him.

You don’t really bother moving so much from the counter, and you just remain leaning where you are, watching John work his overly-friendly magic.

This guy actually stays, which you’re happy about: John seemed pretty bummed the other day when he mentioned that nobody usually comes in. The guy walks around for a bit while John watches him eagerly, and you think he’s gonna break something, being so excited about something like this.

The customer comes back up to the register a few minutes later with a small stack of sheet music, and you move out of the way. You swear John almost screams, and he hurries back to ring up the dude’s stuff. Once the guy leaves John honestly looks like he’s about to cry tears of joy.

“He actually _bough_ something!” he squeaks, reaching over the counter and grabbing your shoulders. “Oh my God!”

You laugh. “Yeah, that’s kind of what people do in stores.”

John shakes you a bit and then rushes around the counter, hugging you tightly. You rub his back gently, trying to calm him down, and a few minutes later he lets go of you and sighs happily. You pat his head and smile at him. “I’m glad you got somebody,” you say, “but really, try not to give yourself a heart attack over it.”

John laughs and hugs you again, and you stay with him for the whole rest of his shift.

-

Afterward when you both leave the store, you start off in the direction of your apartment, but before you can even take a few good steps John yanks you back and tugs you along toward _his_ home until you start to walk with him willingly.

“You don’t have anywhere to be, do you?” he asks you, and the way he says it tells you that he probably couldn’t care less what your response is. So you tell him no, you don’t have plans, and he starts to walk faster, tugging you along with him again. You laugh and go with him just a bit slower than he’d like, just to mess with him, but increase your pace considerably when he threatens never to play the piano for you again if you don’t speed your ass up. It’s quite a convincing argument, really.

You both go rushing up to his house like madmen a few minutes later, and he practically shoves you inside when he unlocks the door. You crash around in that narrow hallway with him for a minute until you finally stumble into the living room, where you flop onto the couch. You’re pretty comfortable, and you actually start falling asleep until John plops his ass, rather violently, down next to you, and starts complaining about how slow you are.

After a few minutes of that you swat at him to try to shut him up, and he just swats back at you, which leads to a seemingly endless war of slapping and poking and jabbing.

You both stop, though, when the question of _what the hell are we doing_ arises.

You both seem to decide that no, you have no idea what the hell you’re doing, so you both just laugh and cuddle up to each other. It’s kind of stupid, though, because the TV remote is on the seat opposite you, next to John. He’s trying to get all close to you, and you’re kind of shoving him out of the way to try to reach across him and grab the remote, and that makes him look at you like you have serious problems, and you’re telling him to _move out of the fucking way_ and he looks really, really confused until you point out the remote to him.

Then he laughs, grabs the remote, and hands it to you. Simple as that.

You roll your eyes and turn on the TV, promptly flipping the channel to one showing another shitty cliché soap like the one you watched at your place. Once you’ve done that, you toss the remote aside and hug John close to you. He giggles, fucking _giggles_ , and smiles up at you. You kiss his nose and you both stay cuddled up like that until John starts complaining about being cold, to which you respond with a question like _how the fuck are you cold when you’ve got me practically smothering you with my body_ to which he responds with something like _just let me go get a blanket, Dave_. So you let go of him and he grins at you, then bounces up from the couch and hurries off down the hall.

You smile to yourself and move to push your shades up a bit, and your heart feels like it stops for a second when you realize they’re gone.

Oh, _no_.

You left them at the music store, didn’t you? Well, technically John left them there, since he took them off you in the first place, but still. Shit.

This is going to bother you a whole, whole lot until you get them back.

At this point John comes hurrying back to you with what looks like about sixteen blankets in his arms. He swears to you that it’s just three really fuzzy ones, and you facepalm, and he laughs.

“I told you!” John squeaks defensively. “I’m _cold_.”

He sits back down next to you and promptly buries himself in the blankets so deep that just his head is sticking out. After a few minutes of squirming around and trying to get comfortable – you’re just staring at him this whole time: really, you have no comments whatsoever – he settles for wrapping himself up in the blankets so tightly he looks like a burrito.

You laugh at him, because he’s silly, and hug him close to you like you had him before. He giggles again, and you die a little inside, but then you get that horrible feeling about your shades again, and John notices.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Did I do something? Are you feeling left out because of the blankets?”

You shake your head. “Nah, I’m just kind of uneasy because we left my shades at the store.”

He gasps. “Oh, no! I forgot about them, Dave, I’m sorry!”

You shake your head again, smiling reassuringly at John. “It’s fine, we can just get them back tomorrow.”

You hope, anyway. If some douche went and stole them you really think you’re going to flip your shit.

“Yeah, I’ll be sure to look!”

“Don’t you step on them, either. I heard you drop them on the floor when you kissed me.”

John squeaks. “You did? I thought you didn’t, and I was kind of relieved, because I didn’t want you to get all upset about them getting scratched or anything, because, I mean, I didn’t need you going and trying to fuss at me about your shades while I was trying to kiss you! Oh, but then, even if you did, maybe I could try to do that cheesy thing in the movies where there’s a couple and one of them shuts the other one up by kissing them or something? I don’t think I could do that, though, so never mind, I guess I ju—“

You do exactly what John just said, and you pull him close to you and kiss him just to shut him up. He makes a weird noise when you do, and you’re pretty sure he’d be freaking out a lot more if he hadn’t wrapped himself up in the blankets like that. You start laughing, because he’s so dumb, and pull away from him before too long. He’s blushing so heavily you laugh some more, and he starts squirming around in his weird blanket burrito. You watch him with amusement until he finally yanks his arms out, and then he pulls you down and kisses you right back. He’s actually pretty forceful, which catches you off-guard, but it doesn’t last so long. Regardless, now _you’re_ the one sitting there blushing, and John’s laughing.

You push his face away and try to will your blush back down, and John wraps himself back up in his burrito. You’re not sure what to do now: you’re perfectly fine just sitting with John, but you don’t really know if _he_ finds that entertaining. Sitting with you. And stuff. Like, he probably thinks it’s boring and wants to do something else.

It’s quiet between you two now, though, and you can’t really bring yourself to break the silence yet. It’s nice.

So you just settle down next to John again after you’re more composed, and he snuggles up to you best he can while wrapped up in the blankets. The soap that’s on TV is too quiet to really hear, and you don’t want to move to get the remote because you’re comfortable and you don’t want John to complain. So you start making up dialogue in your head.

It went a little something like this:  
  
“Senpai! How _could_ you?!”  
“It… it had to be done.”  
“But… but _senpai_ … I’m… I’m so sorry….” _[begins sobbing]_  
“No. No more apologies. They mean nothing. You will never change.”  
“But Senpai! I _can_ change! I _can_!”  
“No.”  
“Senpai!” _[sobs harder]_  
 _[senpai turns away dramatically and walks away slowly]_  
 _[screaming]_ “Senpaiii!”  
  
You, uh. That came out more… _anime_ than you meant for it to.

Uh.

John’s poking you, so you snap out of it and blink at him.

“You’re not seriously watching that, are you?” he asks.

“Uh… no?”

He laughs. “You so are watching it.”

“I am not!” you almost squeak. “I can’t even hear it!”

John giggles. “Whatever, Dave. But I will not let you live this down, let me say that right now.”

You groan. You don’t doubt that for a second.

You’re both quiet for a few minutes, with nothing but near-silent voices from the TV advertising some shitty grill thing. Like, what? Who wants to make their burgers with the condiments and shit _inside_ the patty?

“We have a lot of dumb conversations,” you say suddenly, trying to break the awkward silence.

“Yeah? I guess we do.”

You both fall into that awkward silence again, and you sigh. After a few seconds John smiles and pulls his arms out of his blanket burrito again. He reaches up and wraps his arms around your neck, and you’re not so sure what he’s trying to do. You’re not about to be a total asshole and shove him off or anything, so you just smile at him, and he smiles back at you, gently pulling you closer. He kisses your nose and you hug him to yourself, and then you’re both just smiling at each other and it’s nice.

After a few minutes of this John giggles a bit and rests his head on your chest. “You still don’t know my last name, do you?”

“You don’t know mine either!”

John laughs some more, and you get a little nervous. “What?” you ask.

“It’s Strider, isn’t it?”

“What?”

He laughs some more. “It _is_ Strider.”

“How the fuck do you know that? I don’t think I ever told you.”

“Well, the other day you were all like ‘it’s a Strider thing’ when you were joking about being attractive.”

“Shit.”

“Hehe.”

“Tell me your name, then, John. Come on.”

You lean back a little and glare at John the best you can. It’s not very effective, because all John does in response is stare at you and then giggle.

“It’s Egbert,” he says, and now you’re the one staring at him.

“That name sounds really dumb.”

“I will kick you right out of this house.”

“By dumb I meant _mind-blowingly incredible_.”

“That’s better.”

You smile and kiss John’s forehead. You’ve got it now:

John Egbert.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is super super short! I do have a LOT more written that follows this, though, and I'm trying to start making my chapters longer. The ones that follow this SHOULD be longer, and I'm probably going to post some more when I get home later tonight!  
> Thank you!

You and John fall asleep like that eventually; him in his burrito blankets and you snuggled up as close to him as possible since he didn’t share the fucking blankets. You don’t usually wake up until late in the afternoon, so it’s a real fucking pain when John wakes you the fuck up by smacking you as hard as he possibly can with a cushion from the couch. You groan loudly and swat in his general direction, trying to turn away and go back to sleep. But then he hits you again, and you sit up and look at him, feeling really, really dead.

“You look like you just fell down the stairs and tried to fight a sumo wrestler,” John comments, casually hitting you with the cushion again.

“What. Let me sleep.”

“No, you need to wake up!” John says loudly, grabbing you and trying to pull you up into a standing position. However, you refused to cooperate at all, and John just wound up dropping you on the floor.

“Ugh.”

After a few minutes of lying on the floor with John standing over you while you slip in and out of consciousness, you finally sit up properly and stretch a little bit. “If you wake me up like this ever again I will never forgive you. I’ll call you Burrito Boy forever.”

John looks extremely confused. “Burrito boy…?”

“You looked like a burrito last night!” you squawk. “All wrapped up in those goddamn blankets.”

“Oh yeah! I guess I did.”

A while later John’s finally gotten you to stand and follow him idly, with a blanket around your shoulders. He’s gonna go play the piano, apparently. You’re cold as _fuck_ when you go into that old room, and when John sits down on the bench you sit down right next to him and rob him of all his personal space.

“Uh, Dave?” John says, gently trying to push you away. “I don’t think I can play if you’re on top of me like that.”

“But I'm _cold_.”

John laughs. “Fine, but you’ll have to deal with me reaching across you and stuff.”

“Whatever.”

He sighs, and then he starts playing. You glance up and see that there’s not even music up there, and that he’s playing something from memory. That doesn’t make it any less nice, and you close your eyes, still sitting with him. It’s a nice, slowish song, and eventually you fall asleep like that.

-

Not too long later, John’s shaking you gently, and you sit up a little bit. You lean back a little too far, forgetting you’re sitting on the bench, and you lose your balance. You freak out and John grabs you, straightening you back up into a proper sitting position.

You yawn and hug him, leaning on him heavily. He hugs you back gently, rubbing your back a bit. You’re woken up suddenly, though, when you accidentally hit a key on the piano with your elbow. John laughs when you squeak and sit up, and you shove him lightly.

“Do you wanna try it?” he asks, and you shake your head. “Fine,” he says, “but I’m gonna make you play someday. Even if you don’t know how.”

You don’t doubt that, and you nod.

“Right. Okay, so I’m gonna go get something to eat. Do you want anything?”

“Ugh, maybe not.” You sigh and stretch a little bit. “I think I should go home. I’ve been meaning to talk to my bro about some shit and he might be back now.”

“At least eat some Frosted Flakes or something,” John says, getting up and looking down at you. “I swear they aren’t shitty or anything.”

“I know!” you squeak. “I never said they were shitty.”

John just squints at you, and now you’re starting to think that maybe you _did_ call them shitty at some point. He’s so fucking serious about this cereal, damn.

“Okay, geez, I’ll eat some. I don’t think they’re shitty, though, I swear.”

“I take my cereal very seriously, Dave,” John says, and you can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

Wow.

So, a few bowls of Frosted Flakes later, you’re on your way back to your apartment.

You really hope you don’t screw this up.


	20. Chapter 20

You are Dave’s brother.

For the first time in a while you’re actually home alone. It surprises you, because even though it’s kind of early in the morning, Dave is usually sitting around sleeping or waiting for you to come back so he can complain about how long you’ve been gone. He’s usually _here_.

He stopped leaving notes about where he was going a long time ago, and you’re not even sure if you’ve got his phone number right.

The communication between you two really is shit.

You decide to wait for him rather than turn back around and leave so soon, and it bothers you that it feels like the roles between you two are reversed again. It’s been feeling like that a lot lately, to be terribly honest.

You sit on the couch and stare at the door for a few minutes, almost as if Dave’s gonna come shooting through there if you look at it long enough.

Of course, he isn’t, so you sigh and look away at the floor instead.

There’s so much shit on the floor. For once, it’s bothering you.

You sit there, uneasy, for several minutes, in the silence, before you finally get up and start gathering up all the puppets that are everywhere.

You pick some of them up, then take them back and dump them in your room. You make a bunch of little trips like this, taking little piles of puppets back and just leaving them in your room.

Once you get them all you dig up a few old boxes and stuff all the puppets in them, and then you shove all the boxes under your bed, hopefully where you can forget about them.

The rest of the shit in the apartment is just normal shit, and you clean all that up, too.

You think about going in to Dave’s room and cleaning up in there, too, but you know he wouldn’t be too happy about that.

Once you’re finished, you walk around the apartment, and the floor is actually cleared up and you’re not tripping over shit every two seconds. It’s nice, and the last thing you do is take Lil’ Cal and toss him under your bed with the other puppets. You hope he’ll forgive you.

It’s pretty depressing, but then you decide to go and clean the kitchen to distract yourself.

So you go out there and you wipe down the counters and wash the dishes and throw out any food that’s not good anymore and you make sure all the dishes and silverware are in the right place and you even tape up a bunch of fucking _labels_ on the cabinets, and then you start to feel like maybe you’ve completely lost it – _you, putting up labels of all things_ – so you go back and sit on the couch again.

It’s really weird having the space around you so clean. You don’t think you missed a single puppet, and you even managed to untangle all the fucking cords wired back behind the TV and all the computers and stuff.

You think you might have ordered a new microwave from somewhere too, at some point during all that. You can’t remember.

You feel like some crazy germophobe soccer mom person.  
You’re pretty exhausted after doing all this spontaneous cleaning, so once you really settle down on the couch and get comfortable, you fall asleep.

-

You wake up God knows how long later to somebody nudging you and saying “hey” over and over and over. You groan and try to shift away from whoever it is, but it doesn’t really work.

So, instead, you look over and squint at the offending person, and groan when you see that it’s Dave. _Of course_ it’s Dave.

“Hey,” he says again, and you try to push him away. “No, stop that,” he says firmly, shoving you back. “I wanna talk to you.”

This catches your attention, waking you up a bit. “What the fuck is there to talk about?” you ask.

“There’s lots of stuff to talk about,” Dave says, and he’s so goddamn _calm_ that it kind of pisses you off.

“Are you sure, Dave?” you ask, sitting up a little more and pushing up your shades. You glare at him. “Are you really, fucking sure? Because _apparently_ there hasn’t been anything to talk about for _years_. _Apparently_ you’ve been so fucking busy pretending I don’t even exist that it’s like you don’t even want to acknowledge that we have a fucking problem here. We’ve _had_ a fucking problem here for a _long_ time, and I’m sick of it.”

You know you probably could have said all that better, and been more calm and composed and polite or whatever shit, and it makes you feel once more that your roles are still reversed; even more so when Dave doesn’t even flinch. He’s so calm and mature and it _bothers_ you, and you’re not so sure what to do.

“I know,” he says, and he sighs. “I know, fuck, I _know_.”

You don’t say anything, and he waits a few awkward moments before he continues. “I don’t even know if I should apologize in the first place, but I’m sorry, okay. I treat you like shit and let whatever issues you have annoy me, and I just complain instead of helping you. It’s really fucking stupid.”

You sigh. “It’s really weird to hear you say something like that.”

“I know, right?” he says, and he smiles a bit. That smile falls quickly, though, and he looks at the floor.

You take a deep breath. “I worry about you,” you say, and Dave looks up at you again.

“What?”

“I worry about you,” you say a bit louder. “I always do, and I always have. I just want you to be happy, but all the fucking time you just seem so indifferent and bored and irritated and it makes me feel like shit because I feel like I should _do_ something to make you feel better, and it’s so _fucking_ stupid, and I need to stop obsessing over all the shit about you and what you should go and do, just… do what you want, okay, just make sure you’re happy about it, and don’t forget about me, either.”

Dave blinks at you. “I know,” he says.

“Good,” you respond. “I’m not gonna repeat that shit.”

“Yeah,” he says. Then he sighs. “Why the fuck did you clean up?”

“What?”

Dave gestures around you, and you scream a little bit when you see everything is gone. It looks almost as if you were robbed or something, since everything is so _clean_. You can’t believe you forgot about all that.

“I don’t actually know,” you say slowly, and he laughs.

“I’ll just assume you did it for me, and thank God for the nice puppet-free home while it lasts,” Dave responds, and you smile, just a bit.

It’s weird, being so friendly and open and shit, but you really think it helped.

Wait.

“Where the _fuck_ are your shades?” you ask, and Dave looks confused for a split second before he sighs.

“John left them at the store,” he says, and that sentence means almost nothing to you.

“Who the fuck is John?” you ask. “Wait, did you say he was the kid that showed up on the roof the other day, or…?”

“Yeah, that’s him,” Dave says, and you shoot him a weird look.

“What was he doing with your shades?”

Dave sighs. “He took them off me and then dropped them on the floor at some point and we both forgot about them.”

“How’d you _forget_ about your _shades_?”

“I was, um, distracted.”

“Whatever.”

Dave smiles at you, shoving you lightly, and then he wanders around the room a little bit. He really does look kind of happy that the place is actually tidy now, and for a moment you consider keeping it like this. But then you factor in that you’re usually lazy as _shit_ , so scratch that.

He looks over into the kitchen, and squints a bit. Then he walks over to the cabinets, and you hear him laugh.

He’s totally laughing at the labels you taped up. You’re certain of it. You’re so fucking certain. (You’re never going to hear the end of this.)

“You labeled the fucking cabinets,” you hear Dave say. Bingo.

“Yeah,” you say. “I did.”

“You’re so dumb, oh my _God_.”

You decide to just let him laugh, and things go pretty well for the rest of the day for the first time in a while. You fall back asleep at some point on that couch, though, and you eventually wake up to find Dave sleeping right next to you.

You hope he’ll find it nice when he wakes up to see that you’re still there for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been forgetting to ask! I've managed to kind of avoid calling Dave's bro "Bro" directly. I can't decide whether I should just call him that, or if I should call him Dirk instead! That's always been kind of a confusing thing for me. I've seen him called Dirk sometimes and just Bro others, which is why I can't really decide.  
> So if he comes up again and any of you have an opinion on what I should call him, please tell me!  
> Thank you!


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty long. Goodness.  
> I... can't think of much else to say here. Gahh.  
> More at the end!

Your name is John, and you’re currently walking to work.

It’s the same day as when Dave went to go talk to his brother or whatever. You hope he’s okay.

It’s a really, _really_ nice afternoon though. It’s kind of misty, which is nice because then the air isn’t dry as fuck. That always tends to make your throat hurt. It also makes the sunlight look nice: it really brings out the actual rays shining down. It looks cool.

There isn’t much of a breeze at all, but whenever the wind blows even a bit it’s a nice, cool breeze that goes nicely with the mist. The sidewalk is a bit wet, probably from the mist, but it’s not even humid yet. Everything is just really sunny, but cool, yet at the same time not cold enough to be unpleasant.

You’re pretty disappointed when you have to step inside the store.

This isn’t actually your shift. You usually work later in the afternoon, and Rose comes in around now, but she isn’t here today. She actually called you – you’re not sure how she got your number – and told you she was sick, and asked if you could cover her shift for her.

Normally you’d find this kind of a ridiculous request, but you don’t have much to do and you figure Dave will show up at some point, whenever he’s done with his _brother issues_ , which will make things less boring.

Yeah.

Whatever, you like this job anyway. Not to mention it was really nice walking here.

You really should start waking up earlier like you did today.

The morning goes fairly uneventfully. You actually get a few customers who look very surprised when they see you instead of Rose. You refrain from getting too excited, and you just stay behind the register, greeting them when they come in and offering help if they look unsure.

It’s such an accomplishment. You think you’ll go and get a pizza later or something to celebrate it.

There’s a lot of downtime after those first few customers. You do your usual stuff: make sure the music isn’t disorganized, check some of the equipment, count the money in the register, etc. etc. God, this store is so small. After you do all that you do lots of other stuff to try to pass the time: you clean off your glasses, you find a Sharpie and doodle some stuff on your arms (then go wash it off because hey, that isn’t professional!), and then you remember you’re supposed to be looking for Dave’s shades.

Oops.

You stoop down and look around behind the register where you dropped them. You’re a bit surprised to find them gone, and so then you wander around the store looking for them in all the places you can think of. Maybe they got kicked or something.

After about twenty minutes you still haven’t found the shades and you’re really hoping that Dave won’t get too upset over their loss.

You sigh and return to idly messing with whatever you can find behind the register. Soon enough, though, you’re really hungry, and nobody’s come in for a while, so you decide to take about fifteen minutes to go and get a sandwich or at least a bag of chips or something to eat.

You lock up the store for the time being and go off to a little convenience store nearby, and you buy a few bags of chips and get yourself a little sandwich while you’re there. On your way back you see a glasses place across the street, and you decide to go over and see if they have any decent shades.

Ten minutes later would have you settling back down behind the register and smiling at the shades you just bought.

-

You’re still John, and you’re currently eating the admittedly lacking “lunch” you bought for yourself.

You put the shades away behind the register and decided to give them to Dave later. They’re not quite the same as the ones he had before: his other ones were sort of shaped weird, kind of like triangles. So you got some pretty generic shades, but they seem sturdy and they honestly weren’t all that cheap. You think they’ll look nice on him.

You’re pretty proud of yourself for not making a big deal about Dave’s eyes. You read somewhere once that there’s some condition where people’s irises are messed up or something, and rather than having a color you can just see right through and see the blood in their eyes which makes them appear red. You think it’s cool, honestly, even if it sounds kind of gross.

You figure you won’t ask him about it much. It probably bothers him if he wears those shades all the time.

After you finish your food you sit there behind the counter idly opening and shutting the register, waiting for Dave to show up. You assume he will, since he usually does so much anyway.

It’s horribly boring and you really wish you had a phone or something.

It’s really stupid, honestly. You’ve never had so much of a need for a cell phone. You have a house phone, of course, and there’s the phone here in the store, but it sure would be nice to have a phone with some games or something on it. You’d be considerably less bored. There’s not even a computer here, though, so… you do something you haven’t really done much at work.

You go and you take down one of the keyboards from the wall.

You don’t like messing with them, even though it’d be nice entertainment to be able to play while you’re working. However they’re kept up so high on the wall that you’re afraid you’ll drop one someday, so you’re cautious.

You set it up and plug it in and you don’t even bother finding a chair to sit in. You just stand, in front of the keyboard.

You’re hesitant to play, really. You’re much more used to the piano at your house, not this electronic one.

But hey. You’re bored.

So you place your hands lightly on the keys, and you play, for a very long time.

-

No one comes in for the rest of your shift – as in, your actual shift, not Rose’s. You played that keyboard for hours, and you never once got sick of it. You’re getting a bit restless, though, from having to stand in one place for so long.

You’re honestly pretty disappointed that Dave never showed.

Whatever, you could just swing by his apartment on your way home, you guess. Only reason you really want to see him so bad is so you can give him the shades.

Oh wait. What if he never showed up because he was still dealing with his brother? What if they were fighting on the roof again? You hope Dave’s not, like, _dead_ or anything. Gosh. Who settles issues by fighting like that, anyway?

Now you’re conflicted. You could either show up and interrupt whatever they’re doing, which is totally not your business in the first place, or you could just go home and give the shades to Dave whenever he shows up next. But hey, what if they’re fighting again! Maybe you should go help!

Gosh, this is so difficult.

In the end you decide to just walk around near his apartment building. That way you can pass by and see if they’re up on the roof, and if they’re not, well, you’ll just go home. Yeah. Good plan. Best plan.

So you set off in the direction of his building, which is closer than you really realized before. You get there in a fairly small amount of time, and crane your head back to look up toward the roof. You stand there for a few minutes – probably looking like an idiot, to be honest – and you don’t see anybody up there, so you figure they’re not fighting.

Well, great.

You guess you can go home now.

…but your curiosity gets the better of you, and you find yourself walking up to the building and hurrying inside.

-

After kind of a while of trying to figure out if you could remember where Dave’s apartment even _is_ , you finally come up to what you’re about 85% sure is the right apartment. You knock on the door, wait, knock again, wait some more… and nobody ever answers.

Ugh. Now you _really_ hope Dave isn’t dead or anything.

You stay standing there for several minutes until finally you hear somebody unlocking the door. Then Dave opens it, and he looks very not dead. Yay.

“Dave!” you exclaim. “You’re not dead!”

“What?” he asks. He looks really sleepy. Maybe you shouldn’t have woken him up so early.

“Oh, uh…” you say nervously. You guess him dying was a pretty ridiculous idea anyway. “Nothing, never mind. I’m here because I have your shades!”

“Sweet,” Dave says, and he smiles just a bit. “Hand ‘em over.”

You grin, and look down at the floor, pulling the shades out of your jacket pocket. (You’re glad they didn’t fall out or anything when you walked here.) “I couldn’t find your actual shades,” you say, “so I bought you some new ones that I thought would look nice!”

You hand him the shades, and he eyes them for a moment before putting them on. “Cool,” he says. “I like these.”

“Oh, I’m glad!” you say, and wow, you really are glad. You figured he’d be kind of iffy about them not being quite the same as his older ones. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be okay with them not being the same shape.”

“Nah, I don’t really care either way,” he says. “Should I pay you back for these, or…?”

“No!” you squeak, shaking your head. “If I didn’t want to spend my money on them I wouldn’t have gotten them for you.”

He smiles just a little bit wider. “All right. Thanks, then.”

“Mmhmm.” You really want to ask him what the deal is with his brother, but you still really don’t think it’s your business to worry about.

“So, uh,” Dave says, a bit awkwardly, “do you want to come in or something?”

“No, I should probably go home,” you tell him. “I figured I was interrupting you anyway.”

“Oh, no, you weren’t. My bro’s passed out on the couch right now.”

“So, so then everything’s—“

“Everything’s fine. Don’t worry about it, John, I’ll tell you all about it later.”

“Mm. Okay.” You shift your weight a little bit, starting to glance around everywhere except at Dave. You don’t really want to go home yet, but you don’t really want to stay. Dave looks really tired and you figure he probably wants to sleep, so… you’re conflicted.

“You _can_ come in, you know,” Dave says. “But hey, if you need to go home, that’s fine too.” He laughs a little bit. “You look so fidgety, don’t worry so much.”

“Sorry.” You sigh. “I can’t decide whether to stay or not.”

Dave shrugs. “Really, John, don’t worry so much. I can just call you or something. Well, I’d have to get your number first. But yeah, I can just call you. Or something.” He pauses. “Do you even have a phone?”

“I have one at my house!”

“You don’t have, like, a cell phone or anything?”

“Nope.”

At this point Dave just looks at you, and you start getting nervous. “What?”

“John.” Dave grabs you by the shoulders. “In this day and age. How can you not. Have. A cell phone.”

“I-I don’t know!” you squeak. “I’ve just never needed one!”

Dave looks like you just slapped him. He slowly lets go of you, and pulls out an iPhone. He waves it at you. “Look at this shit. Look at it. It _changes_ you, John. Bored? Text your friend. Play a game. Go on the fucking Internet. Make your ringtone an obnoxious piece of shit just for kicks. This sort of thing becomes your _best fucking friend_ , John. Just one phone. It changes you so much you start talking about knitting little cases and snugglies for it and your friends look at you like you’re completely crazy but _no_ , you’re _not_ crazy, you just….”

Dave then takes his phone and holds it to his cheek in such an emotional fashion that you almost think he’s having some kind of freaky religious experience.

“Dave.”

“What?”

You shake your head slowly, and put a hand on his shoulder. “I love you, Dave, but I think you have a serious problem.”

“Really?”

“Dude. Put the phone down.”

It takes him a moment, but Dave slowly lowers the phone down. You smile at him. “Please don’t obsess over something that much ever again.”

“Yeah.” Dave smiles back at you, and then he hands you the phone. “Take that for tonight or whatever and mess with it. I want you to get a phone, man. You gotta realize your need for it.”

“Haha, fine.” You glance at the phone and then pocket it.

“If you break it or lose it or anything I’m going to kick your ass, I swear.”

You just look at him. “Do you _really_ think _I’m_ going to lose your phone?”

“Hey, I’m just saying.”

“Whatever, Dave.”

You wave at him, and start to turn to leave, but he holds your arm gently. “Shit, man, hang on a second.” He hugs you, and then he kisses your cheek. “’Bye, honey,” he says in a squeaky voice, striking a pose and batting his eyelashes at you.

You laugh, and shove him playfully. “You’re so dumb.”

“Pff. Whatever, John.”

“Whatever, Dave.”

This time you really do get to leave. You hurry home, since you didn’t plan to stay that long, and you’re a bit surprised to find your dad isn’t home. He was supposed to be home early today, but you guess he went to the store or something.

You hope he’s not looking for you or anything. (Wow, you guess it really _would_ be nice to have a phone for something like this.)

So, while you wait, you go and flop onto the couch, getting out Dave’s phone and messing around on it. His background is some shitty-quality mosaic pattern made out of Doritos. You don’t know what you expected, but you’re pretty sure it wasn’t that.

He’s got about a billion apps of what look like the shittiest games ever created, and you dig around through those for a while until you find his pictures.

You’re almost scared to look through them, but you do, of course. The first bunch of pictures is the same picture of an apple core saved over and over and over again, and then there’s, like, thirty-seven pictures of Dave looking extremely bored, and then there’s a few pictures of the phone reflected in the lenses of Dave’s shades….

These are the worst pictures you’ve ever seen. None of them are even recent.

So, you get up and go around your house taking pictures of stuff.

First you take a picture of your yard out the window, and then you take a few pictures of some sheet music and the piano keys. Then you take a bunch of pictures of yourself making various faces.

This is kind of fun.

After you’re done running around taking pictures of random things in your house, you sit back down and decide to see if you can text anybody. You feel like you shouldn’t be going through Dave’s stuff like this, but hey: he didn’t say not to.

He’s got exactly zero messages on his phone, and only two contacts.

What.

One is simply “bro”, and the other one is “yo why the fuck would you call your own home”.

So the only two numbers in here are for his brother and his home phone.

You _really_ don’t know what you expected.

You mess with the phone for a little while longer, trying out some of the apps and such. When you’re in the middle of one of the games, though, your dad comes in, and the sound of the door opening scares the absolute shit out of you.

The thing about your dad is, um. He’s just such a _dad_. You’re almost surprised he doesn’t call you “sport” or anything like that.

_Eugh_.

You say hi, Dad, and he says hey, John, and then he actually comes in and asks you whatcha got there, son, and you say well it’s my, uh, really good friend’s phone, and he asks you if you stole it, and you say no, Dad, he let me borrow it! I wouldn’t steal from him!

And then your dad comments on how it’s a nice phone and asks you if you’re having fun with it. You say yeah, it’s pretty interesting. He nods and then walks back down the hall to put his stuff away.

That was more awkward than usual.

You wonder if Dave has told his brother about how you and him are, like… together now or whatever. At least you think you are. Gosh, that’s so weird to say. _Guhh_.

You… really don’t think you’re going to be telling your dad anytime soon. Nope. Honestly, you’re not looking forward to how that conversation is going to turn out.

See, your dad isn’t all that… _accepting_ of things sometimes.

Speaking of. Here he comes back again. _Ugh_.

“How was your day?” he asks, sitting down next to you on the couch.

“Pretty normal,” you say. “This phone was really the only interesting thing that happened today.”

“Yeah, what’s the story behind that?”

This conversation is so _awkward_. It’s weird. You’re usually pretty comfortable with your dad.

You sigh.

“Dave left his shades at the store the other day and I went to get them back today but they were gone. So I bought him some new ones and I went to his place to give them to him, and when I did he offered for me to come in, but I said that I should probably go home, and he offered to call me instead. And then I told him that I didn’t have a cell phone so he freaked out and made this really obsessive speech about his phone and then he had me borrow it so that I could ‘realize my need’ or something.”

“He sounds interesting.”

“Yeah, he’s really dumb. His background is this weird Dorito thing.”

“If you want to get a phone, I could help you look for a decent one,” your dad offers. You’re a little surprised he said that. He’s usually _all about_ saving money.

“Nah, I still don’t think I need one all that bad,” you respond. “Besides, it’s kind of fun making Dave freak out like this.”

“I see. He really does seem like quite the character.”

“Yeah,” you say, laughing awkwardly. “He kind of is.”

Then you both sit there, not saying anything, and you wish had something better to talk about. It’s just been so _uneventful_.

But really, you just _can’t_ seem to get your mind off of Dave now. Talking about him and stuff just doesn’t help. Dave, Dave, Dave. Daaaaaaaave.

You’re gonna go call him before you lose your mind.

-

You manage to escape from your dad when he goes off to make dinner, so you go up to your room and call the “yo why the fuck would you call your own home” number. You don’t use his cell phone because you don’t want to kill it or anything – Dave didn’t give you the charger.

He picks up pretty fast, and you recognize his voice.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” you respond. You’re both talking pretty quietly. It’s nice: you’re both less wound up than you were earlier.

“How’s… things?” you ask after a few moments, feeling a bit awkward. You don’t talk on the phone much.

“Things?”

“Things.”

You hear Dave laugh a bit on the other end. “Things are good.”

“Okay.”

“How’s, uh… how’s _your_ things?” Dave asks after a minute.

“My things are okay.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah.”

You both sit there in silence for a little while. It’s weird, but it’s kind of nice, too.

“Keep them that way,” you hear Dave say, and you smile.

“Uh-huh.”

“I lost my notebooks.”

It takes you a minute to remember what Dave’s talking about. You almost forget about that: that old composition book and stuff you gave him a while back. You don’t even know what he used those things for.

“Sucks,” you say.

“I’m pissed.”

“I imagine so.”

“No, I’m _really_ pissed. I wrote a lot of stuff in them.”

Well, you guess you know what he used them for now. Huh. You didn’t know Dave was a writer. Or maybe he was trying to keep a journal or something. He still doesn’t really strike you as the type to actually sit down and hand-write things, though.

“Sorry,” you say.

“No, shut up. It’s not like _you_ did anything.” Dave really does sound genuinely upset about this.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“God damn it.”

You pause for a few minutes, and Dave launches into this little rant about how he put them down in his room somewhere, but now he can’t find them. He tells you this ridiculous theory he apparently has of a bird smashing into his room and carrying off the notebooks. It makes you laugh, and then you’re both sitting there in pleasant silence again.

“…we should go do something,” you offer. You know it’s kind of late-ish, but you think maybe after you eat you could sneak back out and take Dave to go fuck around in Wal-Mart or something late at night. That’s _always_ fun.

“Like what? I just like talking to you,” Dave responds, and the way he says it, you just....

Ugh, you love Dave so much it _hurts_.

“Haha.” You laugh a bit. “I always feel like I’m boring you.”

“You do sometimes, but I like looking at you too.” All those times you _swear_ Dave isn’t listening to you, and he’s just staring at you….

“Oh.”

“You’re so dumb.”

“Love you too.”

After that little exchange you both talk a little more, about dumb stuff; about how many times you think Dave could go get his hair cut until he went bald; about how stupid it is when it snows and then there’s all this gross dirty snow still piled up by the sides of the roads four days later; about how you can’t believe you’re not some extreme fatass from all the cake your dad always makes, and how Dave says he can’t believe he’s not fat either since he really likes sugar; how when you were little, you used to pretend you could control the wind; how much you like clouds; how stupid Dave’s phone is….

It’s nice.

Then you propose your stupid Wal-Mart idea and Dave quickly agrees.

_Well_.

You guess you’re going to Wal-Mart then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness. I actually replied to a few comments down there, and wow!! You guys have such nice comments, I really appreciate it! Yes, this is my first fic, and I'm really just getting used to writing fanfiction. I'm not new to writing itself, but I AM new to fanfiction. See, I actually have about a billion original writings saved and posted elsewhere, and I'm much more used to writing that kind of stuff. The style I usually write in for my original stuff is way way way WAY different from this style, and almost none of my works even had dialogue. So this is really new for me, and I really appreciate all these nice comments from everyone! I'm pretty awkward at writing Bro and Dad I think, but I'm trying, and thanks so much for all your suggestions!
> 
> I want to try to start another fic at some point - try and juggle writing two at once, oh my - but I can't really think of who I want to write in it and where I want to go with it, etc. If I start another one I really want to plan it better than I did this one.
> 
> Gosh, I'm saying so much. Bear with me!
> 
> See, I kind of want to write a fic with some of the trolls in it. If I did, though, it'd be some kind of crazy very much humanstuck AU because I think I'd be absolutely horrid at trying to write in a canon setting.
> 
> Goodness. I'll figure this stuff out sometime. I think I'm going to just focus on this fic for now.
> 
> Gosh now I'm in this talkative mood! Ahh!
> 
> Fun fact: I rp a whole lot. Whole whole whole lot. My friend and I have this rp on msparp we've been doing for like five months and the log is, like, 102 pages long, and we rp like seven characters each and it's absolutely CRAZY and I love it so much and I just --  
> I really love rping. Skjfldakj. (I made this really shitty rp blog - prettycoolguyhere.tumblr.com - a little while back but I've gotten absolutely nowhere with it and I just kind of use it to make shitty text posts and stuff and I'm. I just. I hate the theme, too, but when I was trying to set it up it was when my computer was gone and I was on a different computer and I didn't have any good pictures or backgrounds or anything and it was really dumb.)
> 
> Oh my gosh I've talked so much. Nobody cares about this stuff, ahhh. I'll shut up soon, I promise.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for all the comments and feedback and things like that! I really appreciate all of it, and even if you haven't commented or anything, I just really appreciate everyone reading this! It means a lot. I love you guys so much. I love you.
> 
> Thank you!


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goodness! I've got some mixed feelings about posting this chapter so quickly - I was going to post it tomorrow - but I'm probably not going to really have a chance to post anything tomorrow until late, and I'm kind of eager about updating anyway.  
> Ugh, I'm really inconsistent about when I update. Sometimes it's at, like, 8 AM, and I think one time it was in the middle of the day while I was at lunch at school or something. And then sometimes it's late or in the middle of the night or something. Gosh.  
> Is there any time for me to update that's best for you guys? Does it matter to you at all? I wanna try to be more consistent.  
> Thank you!

A little while later, after you hang up with Dave, you go and eat with your dad. It’s strikingly awkward, but not so much as on the couch earlier. He asks you a little more about Dave, and you tell him about how you met each other and blah blah blah and you tell him that Dave’s actually been here twice already, and that you’ve been to his place… he doesn’t comment much.

He tells you that work has been uneventful and you listen even though it’s boring, and then once you’re both finished he gets up and goes to watch TV.

Okay. (Wal-Mart time.)

You go back to your room and get your shit. You get Dave’s phone and a coat to wear and a little bit of money, and then you call idly to your dad “I’ll be back” and hurry out the door.

You’re at Dave’s within twenty minutes, and when you knock on the door it doesn’t take as colossally long for somebody to answer. This time, though, Dave’s brother answers, not Dave.

Oh.

You squeak and step back a bit because _wow_ this guy is kind of intimidating, and he gives you a weird look. You figure you probably look like an idiot, and you step back to where you were.

“Oh, uh,” you say nervously. “Hey, Mister, Mister, Mister… uh….”

“You’re John?” he asks you, and you shut right up and nod quickly. “Call me Bro, then,” he says, and you nod again. He’s kind of creepy and it’s freaking you out.

“O-okay, um, well, I’m looking for Dave…?” you say unsurely. “He’s here, right?”

“Yeah,” Bro answers, and you smile a bit. He opens the door wider and steps over so you can come in, and you’re surprised to see that all the puppets are gone. Last time you were here there were puppets and other shit absolutely _everywhere_ , and now it’s all cleared up.

Huh. You guess that’s… good?

You look awkwardly up at Bro for a moment until he points you down the narrow hallway to Dave’s room. You go down there and don’t even bother knocking, just opening his door and stepping in.

He’s asleep on his bed – well, sort of – in a really ridiculous position.

It looks kind of like he fell off his bed? His head is resting on the floor, but the rest of his body is propped up against the side of his bed and his legs are up on the actual bed. His shades are lopsided, and they’ve slid up onto his forehead. It seriously looks like he fell out of bed headfirst, but he kept sleeping? His neck is probably going to hurt like _hell_ when he finally sits up.

You look at him for a minute and seriously contemplate just walking away and waiting for him to wake up, but then you decide you don’t want to face Bro alone again. So first you just say “Dave” over and over – “Dave. Dave. You’re an idiot. Wake up, Dave. God damn it, Dave” – and when _that_ doesn’t work, you sigh and sit down next to him and poke his face a few times. He shifts around a little when you do that, and it’s only a matter of seconds before he loses his balance and falls completely off the bed. He groans a really pained “ouch” and you try your best not to laugh. He lies there for a minute looking like he’s in agony, rubbing his neck, and then he yanks his blanket down and wraps himself up in it. He’s going back to sleep on the floor, the idiot.

You jab his cheek a few times and he tries to scoot away from you, but there’s nowhere to go except under his bed, and he can’t even fit under there. You laugh and he finally sits up, rubbing his eyes and putting his shades back where they belong. “What the fuck, John?” he groans, and he sounds so utterly tired you feel a little sorry for him.

“Don’t tell me you forgot!” you squeak. “I told you on the phone! Wal-Mart?”

“Aw, shit,” he says. “That.”

“Mmhmm,” you respond, crossing your arms. “Come _oooon_.”

“Normal people don’t go on dates to Wal-Mart,” he says, sitting up a little more and leaning against his bed.

You shove him. “I never said it was a _date_!”

He laughs. “It’s totally a date.”

“It is not!”

“But it so is.”

You sigh and poke his face. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Sí.”

“No.”

“Ja.”

“Nein.”

“Oui.”

“Non.”

“はい。”

“What?”

He laughs again. “I win.”

You pout. “Fiiiine.”

After that you manage to get Dave up, but then he just flops back onto his actual bed and tries to sleep again. You sit there and wait for him for a few minutes, but when he refuses to get up you groan. He doesn’t get up until you say that yes, _fine_ , you’ll consider it a date.

When you say that he grins and hops right up.

You didn’t even notice he was wearing pajamas. They’re… uh.

“What?” he asks. “Don’t like them?”

“They’re _silky_.”

“Don’t forget pink.”

You sigh. “Dave, why are you wearing women’s pajamas?”

“Why _not_?”

You just blink at him. “I don’t know what I expected.”

He laughs. “You should see my bro’s.”

You could have gone your entire life without the series of images that ran through your head just now.

“I’m leaving,” you say, turning around stiffly. “Leaving leaving leaving.”

“What?” Dave asks. “Come on, John, I’ll change out of them. Don’t leeeeave.”

You sigh. You really hope you’re not going to regret this. “Do it fast.”

Dave nods and hurries around, digging through his room for some actual clothes. You keep glancing back at him while he changes, but then you wind up embarrassing yourself when he looks back at you, and you cover up your face. He puts on the same thing he was wearing when you first saw him all that time ago, across the street: a bright red sweatshirt and some jeans. He smiles and takes your hands off your face gently, kissing your forehead. You blush, just a little bit, and hug him close to you, kissing his cheek. He hugs you back, and after a few moments you both finally straighten yourselves out and leave his room.

Bro is lurking around in the kitchen, waiting for what looks like to be a pizza in the oven. You try not to bring attention to yourself, and hurry over and wait for Dave by the door. To your dismay he actually goes right over to Bro.

“Yo, we’re gonna go fuck around at Wal-Mart,” he says. He glances over at the oven. “I can get you some of those frozen pizzas while we’re there if you want.”

You think Bro might have shrugged, but you’re not sure. “Whatever, man, I’ll get you a few anyway,” Dave says, and he pats Bro’s shoulder before coming over to you. “’Kay, let’s go, babe,” he says in his squeaky mocking voice, and you smack his arm playfully. “Shut up, Dave,” you say, and you open the door and hurry down the hall. He follows after you, slamming shut the door behind him. He catches up and takes your hand once he’s walking with you, and you try not to fuck up by gripping his hand too tight or anything. _God_ , you’re such an inexperienced wreck.

Dave looks over at you and you swear he’s trying not to laugh. Ugh.

“So. Walking to Wal-Mart.” He smirks. “Probably gonna take a while.”

“Yeah….” You groan. It’s a little bit out of the way, but not so far you’ll have to walk along a highway or anything. You’ve just got to go out of downtown a bit.

“We’ve got time to _actually talk_ , then!”

You nod a bit. You’re going to regret this. You’re totally going to regret this.

“I’m gonna get the basic shit out of the way. What’s your favorite color?”

“Umm… I don’t know,” you say. “I like blue, I guess. But green’s okay too.”

“Uh-huh,” Dave says. He sounds really really bored and unimpressed. “I like red.”

“That’s kind of obvious,” you say, poking his sweatshirt a little bit.

“Yeah, I guess so.” He sighs, then perks up a bit. “I just remembered. Did you bring my phone?”

“Yeah,” you say. You let go of his hand to take it out of your pocket, and then you hand it to him.

“Yesss,” he says. “My baby.”

“Dave,” you say. “I told you not to obsess over it so much anymore.”

“Shut up, John,” he says, scrolling around on his phone. “Dude. Why did you take like eight billion selfies? I mean hey, you’ve got a nice face, so I’m not complaining, but seriously. There’s a ton of them.”

“Sorry,” you say. “I couldn’t figure out how to delete anything.

“Oh, my God.” Dave laughs. “It’s not that hard, John, really.”

“Hey, I’ve never had a phone before! Shush!” you squeak.

Dave just smiles and kisses your cheek. “You’re so dumb.”

You pout. “You’re dumb too. What with the Dorito background and all.”

“Hey, that Dorito background is sick as fuck and you know it.”

You giggle. “Keep telling yourself that.”

Dave yawns, and then shoves you a little bit. “I know _exactly_ what I’m going to get at Wal-Mart now. Since you’re being a dick.”

“Should I be scared?”

“Yes. Very scared.”

“Oh noooo.”

You giggle some more and hug Dave while you both walk, and he complains about you cramping his style or something. It makes you laugh, and you hug him tighter for a moment before letting go of him. While you walk he gets back to his little interview thing – asking you when your birthday is, what your dad does, if you know how to drive, where you went to school, etc. etc. He seems to find you extremely boring, but he assures you that he loves you anyway. You call him sweet and he smacks your arm with his sweatshirt sleeve a few times.

That’s what it’s like the entire walk there: just you both being dorks and laughing at each other. Eventually you get to Wal-Mart, and by now it’s pretty dark out and most people there are leaving. You both go inside and Dave immediately zips away to all the office supplies and stuff, and you tail after him at your own pace. He disappears down one of the aisles, and you get distracted by some weird shit on the end of it. He comes back pretty quickly, though, and taps you to get your attention. When you glance over him you scream and back up a whole lot, and Dave just laughs.

He did that thing he mentioned a while back, and he drew a pair of freaky-looking eyes on his shades. In metallic Sharpie.

He laughs so hard he has to wipe his eyes a little bit, and you march back up to him and shove him. “Dave, you’re such an asshole!” you declare, and that just makes him laugh harder. He finally pulls off his shades and grins at you, and you jab his cheek. “Jerk.”

“Whatever, John.” He smirks and kisses your cheek, and you swear you’re going to kill him.

“Come on, let’s go fuck around with the video games or something,” he offers, already heading in their direction.

“Fine.”

You both go on over to the electronics. There’s a Kinect demo thing set up, and of course Dave makes a beeline for it. It’s some kind of dancing game, and he immediately starts up and dances some ridiculous dance to some ridiculous music and you’re just standing there _facepalming_ and –

Oh, God. He’s singing along.

You walk away from Dave and quickly lose yourself in racks and racks of clothes. You manage to maneuver yourself into frozen foods eventually, and you’re walking around looking to see if you should buy some ice cream or not when Dave comes up behind you and claps a hand on your shoulder, managing to make you scream again.

“Dave!” you say, spinning around and grabbing his shoulders. “Don't! Do! That!”

He laughs and steps closer to you, wrapping his arms around your waist. “What?” he asks. He leans in closer, almost like he’s going to kiss you. “I do lots of things.”

You blush and let go of his shoulders, and he takes this opportunity to scoot even closer to you. He kisses the corner of your mouth teasingly, and you blush even more.

“I’m going to kill you, Dave,” you mutter. “I’m seriously going to kill you.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say on a date, now is it, John?” he asks. He kisses you gently and then steps back, and you swear he’s just _trying_ to get you all hot and bothered.

“I do what I want,” you say, and he holds his hands up in defense.

“Whoa there,” he says. “Back off, tiger.”

You groan. “You’re such an idiot, Dave.”

“Whatever, I’m gonna get Bro those pizzas,” he says, scurrying off toward the end of aisle and digging around in one of the freezers. “Oh, shit! This one has like five different kinds of cheese!”

You sigh and wait for him to come back, and you try not to laugh when he hobbles back to you carrying a stack of about five boxes. “My fingers are gonna freeze off,” he says.

“Yeah, that’s why you don’t get the frozen stuff until we’re about to leave,” you say, and Dave looks like this is a completely new concept.

“I didn’t even think about that.”

“Just put them down, Dave.”

Dave shrugs and dumps all the pizzas on the floor, and you don’t even bother commenting to him about it. You both walk away toward the clothes again, and Dave declares he’s going to try some stuff on.

Five minutes later you’re trying not to laugh while he hauls a small pile of dresses and skirts and super super fancy suits and such toward the dressing rooms.

The lady there that unlocked the door for him only gave him one exasperated look. Such a strong soul. (She left as soon as Dave went inside.)

The first thing Dave put on was this tight-fitting dress that looked like it was absolutely made of sequins. He made you take a few pictures of him, and then when he tried to go back in there to put on another dress or something you snatched the clothes and _ran_.

He ran right after you, in that dress and everything. He didn’t catch up, either, until you dropped one of the skirts and tripped over it. Then he pretty much body-slammed you, grabbed the clothes, and rushed back to the dressing room.

Next time he came out he was wearing every single thing he’d gotten at the same time.

You sighed. Multiple times.

Once he was changed back into his normal clothes you both headed off toward all the outdoorsy stuff. Bicycles and skateboards and fishing stuff and whatnot. When you get over there, Dave grabs a skateboard, and you get a hula hoop. When you spot somebody coming, you start hula hooping like mad toward them while Dave very unsteadily rode next to you, rapping badly.

You both scared off many people in this fashion.

After that Dave goes to get something to drink, and you stay where you are, slowly wandering the aisles and looking at all the stuff.

It’s freaky, how lonely it feels here. It’s _Wal-Mart_.

It’s still lonely, though, wandering around alone in a nearly deserted store at night. It must be almost miserable working the night shift here. For a moment you find yourself wondering what the music store looks like right now. You’ve never even been near it at night before, but it’s probably pitch-black inside. It makes you kind of sad to think about that.

You wish the music store had more customers. You think it’s a decent place, even if it’s locally-owned and kind of small. It still has good equipment, and hey, you’re a nice employee and you’re willing to help and all that! You should get _all_ the customers.

Ah, well. You like it how it is, anyway. If you had a billion customers all the time, Dave probably wouldn’t be able to come visit you, and you wouldn’t have the nice time to yourself when you can just sort through the sheet music and stuff.

Sigh.

You continue wandering the aisles, and you’re not so sure if you’re up to Dave’s fucking around anymore. All this thinking and wandering and such has gotten you into a pretty lonely, melancholy mood, and right now you just kind of want to be alone.

God, you hate when you get like this.

You end up wandering off and sitting on a stool in the shoe section, staring idly at your legs in one of those weird mirrors that tilt down so you can look at your shoes. You wonder what’s taking Dave so long, since he was just going to go buy a soda or something and then come back.

Sigh, sigh, sighhh.

You eventually zone out completely, sitting there like that, and it takes a few shoves from Dave to finally get you to snap out of it.

“Hey,” he says, sitting down on the little bench in front of you. He’s got some weird mineral water stuff, and he sets it down next to him. “What’s on your mind?”

You shrug, and he smiles at you. “Don’t be so down, John. It’s not like you.”

“Sorry.”

Dave’s smile fades, and he sighs. “Really, John. What’s getting you?”

“I don’t know,” you say quietly. “It’s dumb. It’s like, I started thinking about all this weird deep stuff, and it’s making me feel really lonely and sad.”

“That’s life, John,” Dave says. “It kind of does that to you sometimes.”

You sigh, and look down at the floor. “I can’t believe Wal-Mart of all places is what’s depressing me.”

Dave laughs a bit. “Yeah, I really don’t think you should let Wal-Mart get to you.”

You manage a smile. Dave gets up and leans over, kissing your nose, and you hug him down some more and kiss his lips gently. He smiles and pushes you away carefully after a little bit, picking up his mineral water thing. You stand up with him and he takes your hand, and this time you’re not so nervous.

“I say,” he begins, “we go and get a couple of those giant sacks of gummy bears. We can take them back to my place and totally pig out on them.”

“Sounds like a plan,” you respond, and then you both hurry off to go look at candy. Dave gets, like, three huge bags of gummy bears, and you hold them for him while he goes back to pick up those pizzas he left a while ago. Once you’ve both got your shit together, you go back to the front of the store and check out. Dave wound up buying that goddamn metallic Sharpie, so you really don’t think you’re going to be seeing the end of his creepy shade-eyes for a while.

A few minutes later you’re heading out of the store, hauling all of your shit in a couple of bags. You mention to Dave that you should probably call your dad and tell him that you’re not _actually_ coming back tonight, and Dave hands you his phone so you can call. You manage to get all the bags in one arm and dial your house with the other, and when your dad picks up he sounds kind of worried.

You tell him sorry, you’ve been out with Dave, and that you’re just going to stay at his apartment for tonight and come back home in the morning. Your dad seems kind of exasperated, but he agrees anyway, and you really feel kind of bad about just springing all that on him. You really should spend a little more time with him than you have been, and you promise yourself you’ll try to do that sometime soon.

You and Dave don’t talk much on the walk back. It’s a great night. It’s not freezing cold, and there’s actually a fairly nice breeze blowing. The sky is really clear and you can see the stars up there, along with a little sliver of moon off to the side. Tonight’s the kind of night you would absolutely love to spend in your backyard, lying on a blanket and staring up at the sky. Oh, _shit_ , you bet the roof of Dave’s building would be _perfect_ for that.

“Hey, Dave?” you ask, breaking the silence. “Can we go up on the roof when we get back?”

“Uh, I guess so,” he answers. “Why, though?”

“I really want to look at the sky,” you say, glancing back up at the stars for a moment.

He looks up, too, and you see his eyes widen. “Wow, I almost never notice them,” he says. “Never really decided to look up at night, I guess. Not to mention the shades don’t help.” He smiles. “I should take them off more often.”

You nod. “Yeah, you really should.”

You both fall back into a nice silence, and before too long you get back to Dave’s apartment. You go in, and Dave puts the pizzas away in the freezer, and you dump the bags of gummy bears on the counter. The rest of the apartment is dark; the kitchen the only place with a light on. You glance around a bit and you see that Bro is asleep on the couch, and that lonely, melancholy feeling comes back to you. You kind of just want to go to sleep, or watch a movie, or just sit with Dave now, rather than go up on the roof. It’s like you don’t really want to be able to get lost with your thoughts again, because they’re being really depressing tonight. Talking to your dad didn’t really help, either, because that just made you feel bad about not spending time with him lately.

Seems Dave can tell you’re feeling down again, because soon you feel his arms around you, and he’s kissing your cheeks a few times. “John,” he says, looking at you a bit worriedly, “are you okay?”

You think for a moment, looking at him for a bit before looking away at the counter next to you. You sit there for a bit, and Dave just waits for you, never letting you go. Eventually, you shake your head, and you glance back at Dave. He really looks sad, almost hurt, that you’re upset, and he closes his eyes and hugs you tightly.

“I’m sorry, John,” he tells you. “Whatever it is. I’m sorry it’s depressing you so much.”

You sigh, and look back at the counter again, hugging Dave back weakly. “I love you,” you mumble after a few minutes. “I really, really do, Dave.” Your thoughts are really wandering, and you can’t figure out where they’re trying to go. Dave doesn’t say anything in response to you, and he just rubs your back slowly. “I don’t know what I’d do if you were gone,” you continue after another minute or so. “I just don’t know….”

At this point you’re trying not to start crying, because you really feel like you’re about to. It’s all so frustrating, too, because you don’t even know _why_ you got all depressed in the first place. You don’t have much reason to be sad, you’re just thinking about sad things, and you just….

You want to go to sleep.

Dave lets go of you a bit and sighs, looking at you sadly and kissing your cheek a few times. “You look tired,” he says. “You look really tired.”

You nod, and Dave takes your hand. “Come on, we can go get comfortable under my big fluffy blanket. Does that sound cool?”

You smile a bit and nod again, and Dave smiles back. “Awesome.”

A few minutes later you’re both snuggling up together in Dave’s bed. Neither of you bothered to change clothes, but that’s fine, because it feels nice just being so close to Dave. He hugs you close to him and rubs your back a little bit, kissing all over your face slowly: he kisses your forehead, then moves down to your nose after a few seconds, then your cheeks, and the corners of your mouth….

It’s nice, and soon you feel your eyes closing and your thoughts becoming hazier and hazier. Dave holds you close and rubs your back some more the whole time, and you whisper a few quiet “I love you”s before you finally, finally fall asleep in Dave’s arms.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh I'm so sleepy right now. Ahhh.  
> I have part of the next chapter written and I was thinking I would post it right after I posted this one but I'm so tired I don't think I'm going to finish it tonight.  
> Ahhh.  
> There was actual stuff I wanted to say but now I can't remember it.  
> All your comments are so nice. They make me smile and I love you guys.  
> uwu

You are Dave.

John’s asleep right now, which you’re glad for. He was pretty depressed for a while there, and you think sleep would be extremely good for him right now, honestly.

He’s clinging to you kind of tightly, so you’re not gonna get up or let go of him anytime soon. You hope he’s not having a nightmare or anything.

You don’t really want to go to sleep until you’re sure he’s okay – maybe when he finally lets go of you. Really. Your shirt is going to be stretched out in the morning.

You manage to get your phone out, and you take the time to look at all the selfies John took. He took _way_ too many, but hey: he looks really happy in them.

You’re not going to delete a single one.

You go to fuck around in one of your games, and you see that John actually beat your high score a few times. It’s weird – you’ve never really been able to visualize John actually sitting down and playing a game, or going on a computer, or anything, really. He seems like the kind of person who’s perfectly happy without those things. Playing his piano and such. Even that old thing isn’t electronic.

It’s kind of a nice contrast to you, you think. Opposites attract and all.

You keep rubbing John’s back and holding him close, hoping he’ll settle down and let go of you. You play a few games on your phone for a little bit, but you’re kind of in a weird position, and it’s hard to do with one hand, so you wind up giving that up after a little while. So instead, you just sigh, put your phone aside, and hug John closer to you. He hasn’t let go of you one bit yet, and you kiss his head a few times. After what seems like a long, _long_ time of holding him, he finally shifts around a little and lets go of you. You smile to yourself and kiss his forehead a few times, and once he starts smiling in his sleep you’re pretty sure he’s okay.

You sigh, and over the rest of the night you don’t ever really fall asleep. You don’t stay awake either though – you fall asleep for a while, then wake up, fall asleep again, wake up… it wasn’t too fun.

You wake up for about the billionth time and look to see what time it is. It’s 5:40 AM, and you sigh and decide you’ll just stay awake this time. The sun’s barely even coming up, and you hold John a bit closer. He doesn’t seem like he’s about to wake up anytime soon, and you very, very slowly start edging away from him. He was so impossible to wake up that time you kissed him that it probably isn’t _too_ hard to get away from him, but you’re kind of afraid that he’ll latch on to you again if you’re not too careful. Once you’re a bit away from him, you get up quickly and hop off your bed. You look back at John, and all he does is shift around a bit and latch on to one of your pillows instead.

You smile to yourself and sneak out of your room, heading over to the kitchen. Over on the couch Bro is still sleeping, and you try not to laugh at the blanket he has. It’s got little flowers with smiley faces all over it, and it’s such a contrast to him it’s making you laugh.

You shut yourself up and go into the kitchen, grabbing one of the gummy bear sacks and a glass of water. You hurry on back to your room with all this stuff, and settle down at your desk slowly eating the gummy bears, and watching John over in your bed. You’re curious as to what exactly would wake him up this time, and after you’re satisfied with the gummy bears you put them aside and go get all the sweatshirts and coats you own.

Once you’ve gathered those up, you sneak over to John and carefully sit him up. He’s still clinging to the pillow, which you wrench out of his hands, and then he just looks extremely confused. Still not awake, though. So, first, you take about three coats and put them all on him. They’re pretty thick and they make him look really fluffy, kind of like a marshmallow. Then you take your sweatshirts, and you only manage to put two of those on him before they stop fitting.

He seriously looks like a marshmallow now, and you’re trying not to laugh.

You lie him back down and poke his face over and over and over again for a few minutes, but he’s _still_ asleep, so you go over to the gummy bears.

You grab a few handfuls of gummy bears and start sticking them all over his face, and it makes you laugh so much you have to stop about halfway through. Once you compose yourself, you go and grab a few game controllers and stuff them inside the first sweatshirt. John looks like such an idiot now that you’re really hoping he wakes up soon, before you make things worse.

The last thing you do is down your glass of water, then put the glass upside-down over John’s nose. Then, you set about getting all this stuff _off_ of John, to see if it wakes him up.

It’s also a really good way to kill time, you think.

First you take all the gummy bears off his face and put them on your desk, one by one. Then you take the glass off his nose, and take the game controllers out of the sweatshirt. After that, you take all the coats and sweatshirts off of him, one by one, and he _does_ stir when you do that.

You are just the _master_ of wasting time, aren’t you!!

You grin and sit back as John wakes up, and before too long he’s hugging you and trying to go back to sleep.

“Hehe, ‘sup, John?” you ask, patting his back a little bit.

He just groans in response, and you laugh and kiss his forehead. “Wake up, fatass, we’ve got shit to do today.”

“Don’t call me a fatass,” he grumbles, and you laugh some more. “Seriously, wake up, though. We’ve got like eight hundred gummy bears to eat.”

“Whh…?” John sounds really confused, and you kiss his nose. “Don’t you remember?” you ask. “Wal-Mart?”

“Oh, yeah,” he mutters. “Scared me half to death with your fucking shades….”

You gasp. “John, watch your goddamn language.”

“Sorry.”

He yawns and scoots back from you a bit to stretch, and you grin at him. “And here we have the rare John Egbert. It seems to be executing an intricate and deceptive mating dance.”

John brought his arms back down and shoved you. “Don’t narrate me!”

“Aggression!” you squeak. “Aggression!”

He sighs, and pouts. “Whatever, Dave.”

You laugh, and hug him tightly. “I’m just messing, John. Shut your face.” You let him go and get off your bed, going over and grabbing another handful of gummy bears to eat. “Man, you should have _seen_ yourself a few minutes ago. You looked like a lumpy marshmallow with a face made of gummy bears.”

“What?” John asks, rubbing his eyes. “What did you do?”

“I was trying to see if you’d wake up, so I put, like, five coats and stuff on you.”

“Dave!”

“No, shit, wait, that’s not it. I stuffed some controllers down your shirt and stuck gummy bears to your face, too.”

“Daaaave,” John whines. “Don’t do thaaaat.”

“What? It was funny,” you offer. “Anyway, here.”

You toss the big bag of gummy bears at him, and he manages to catch them. John reaches in and takes a few, eating them almost painfully slowly.

“I should probably go home before too long,” he says slowly. “Gotta get back to my dad and work and stuff.”

You sigh. “Yeah, I guess so. We have an entire morning ahead of us, though.”

John blinks at you, and then grabs your phone from where you left it. “Dave!” he squeaks. “It’s six in the morning!”

“Yeah?”

“I should still be asleep! God!”

“What, really?”

“Yeah!” John sighs. “I usually sleep late since I don’t work until late afternoon.”

“Come on, one day won’t kill you.”

“But I want to sleep more…” John pouts.

“Do it for me,” you say. “Do it for your man.”

John blushes. “D-don’t call yourself that!” he stutters. “You’re not my _man_!”

“But I so am!” you grin at him, and he squeaks.

“W-whatever, Dave, whatever,” he says, shaking his head a little. “I’m gonna go steal some of your _real_ food.”

You laugh. “We don’t _have_ real food here. This is, like, the palace of takeout food, leftovers, and microwaveable dinners.”

John groans. “I’m gonna go microwave some ramen.”

You grin. “Sure, okay.”

John gets up and wobbles off down to the kitchen, and you follow after him with the gummy bears. He makes his precious ramen, and you stand with him while you both wait for it to microwave.

You glance over to see if Bro is still asleep, and he is. Then you nudge John a bit. “Hey,” you say. “What are we, uh, what are we gonna do about this?”

“What?” John asks, and you swear he looks just a little bit nervous.

“You know… _this_ ,” you continue. “Us, I guess.”

He blushes. “I don’t know…” he says nervously. “I don’t think I want to have this conversation, Dave.”

“Come on,” you say. “I think we’re seriously going to have to have it sooner or later.”

“Think of the ramen,” John whines, and you smile a bit.

“I’ll stop talking once your ramen is finished.”

“Okay.”

“So, I just…” you sigh. “I’m not sure either, really. I mean, I guess someday I’ll just go up to Bro and be like ‘hey, Bro, John and I are totally boyfriends. Fun fact. Okay, bye,’ and I guess I figure he’ll just roll with it?” You shrug. “I hope he does, anyway.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” John says quietly. “I don’t think my dad would like it if I told him.” He sighs. “I mean, he’s always telling me how he’s proud of me and stuff, and I don’t think he’ll make too much of a deal about it, but I feel like it’ll change how he sees me or something. Make things all awkward.”

“Yeah, I can understand that,” you offer.

“Yeah….”

You both just stand there in awkward silence until the microwave dings. You suppose that, then, that was that, and you’re just going to have to try to bring it up later.

You go and sit with John back in your room while he eats the ramen, and once he’s done you both talk for a little bit about stuff. He asks you about your notebooks, and you tell him that you misplaced them, you guess, and that you know they’re still someplace in the apartment, at least.

After you both talk for a while you fall into that silence you’ve come so familiar with, and eventually you just decide to kiss him. So you do: you hug him close to you and kiss him gently, and he actually returns it, and it’s nice. So… you do that a few more times, for a little while, and once you both stop and just cuddle up under your blanket, you kind of just… fall asleep.

When you wake up John is gone, but there’s a sticky note stuck to your forehead that says “see you at the store”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I show my friend some of the comments I get on this fic sometimes and she always says that you guys are adorable.  
> Perfect people. I want to be friends with all of you.  
> I think I'm gonna go sleep now.  
> <3


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goodness I swear you guys have the nicest comments. I love all of you so much.  
> There was a bunch of stuff I was going to say but now I don't remember!

“Once upon a time there was a little shit.

“This little shit wanted lots and lots of attention. So he’d pretend all this shit, all like. Yo, there’s a goddamn wolf out there, bitch. Better go and kill it before it fucks up the property and kills the livestock or whatever shit.

“So then everybody was like, shit, we better do that before we get fucked over. So they ran around like fuckin’ _morons_ lookin’ for this bullshit wolf while the little shit laughed his sorry fat ass off.

“The little shit did that like, two more times, and eventually everybody was like, yo, man, this all bullshit. So we ain’t gonna go protect your sorry ass no more. But then the next time that little shit was screamin’ about a goddamn wolf, it was an actual wolf. But hey, all his loser friends or whatever didn’t believe him no more, so they were like ugh, we ain’t wastin’ our time on that lying asshole anymore.

“But since it was real, he got killed, and his friends feel like shit.

“That’s why you don’t lie to people, Dave.”

You are Bro, and you just finished storytime.

-

Your name is Dave, and you’re messing around on your phone.

You noticed that John put the number for the music store in your contacts, and you’re just about to dial it for kicks.

You do, and John picks up almost immediately.

“Hehe, this is John Egbert!!” he says, and he sounds so happy you wish you could reach through the phone and hug him.

“’Sup, John?”

He giggles, you die inside. “’Sup with you, Dave?! I’ve never answered this phone!! It’s so exciting!”

You laugh. “I’m glad you’re having fun.”

He laughs too, and you hear something crash in the background. “Oh, shit, the reeds!” you hear him squeak, and then you hear the phone clatter onto the counter. You laugh to yourself and wait for John to come back, and when he does he sounds really breathless. “I just, like, leaned on the counter and knocked a billion boxes of reeds onto the floor,” he says. “Silly me.”

“God, I love you so much, John,” you say, and he giggles again. “I love you too, Dave!!” he says enthusiastically, and you grin.

“You want me to come visit today?” you offer. “I’m kind of being super lazy right now.”

“Nah, my shift ends in a little bit,” he says. “I’ll probably be gone before you get here!!”

“Not if you wait for me!” you yelp.

He giggles. “Hehe, yeah, I forgot about that thing!”

You laugh a bit. “John, did somebody put something in your food today or… something?”

“No, I think I’m just hyper! I had, like, three Monsters earlier!”

You groan. “Why, John? Why?”

“Because I love you!”

“That doesn’t make sense, man.”

“What?” John says, and he sounds like he’s about to cry. “Are you… are you breaking up with me?”

“What?! No, never!” you squeak. “Geez, John, promise me you’ll never have any kind of energy drinkish thing ever again.”

“B-but I….” He’s starting to cry now, and you think you seriously need to come up with a way to keep him away from caffeine and sugary shit. “I loved you, Dave, I loved you! I loved you so much! How could you leave me? How _could_ you?! We were going to get married and have a billion kids and—“

“Whoa, man,” you say. “I don’t remember that part.”

You hear him sniffle and sigh a bit. “Dave, I’m gonna go get some water or something before I have another Monster-induced breakdown.”

“Sounds good to me. Do you want me to come and meet you?”

“Maybe. I’m probably gonna fall asleep soon, though.”

“Yeah, sugary stuff does that to you.”

You hear John yawn loudly on the other end, and you smile. “Dude, just go home and go to sleep. I’ll go see you later or tomorrow or whatever.”

“I’m so confused.”

You laugh a bit. “John. Home. Sleep. Go.”

“Mmhmm,” he responds, and he sounds really sleepy. You talk for a few more minutes and then say your goodbyes, and eventually go to hang with Bro, since you haven’t properly done that in a while.

-

“He’s what.”

“He’s ridiculous, I swear.”

You’re sitting on the couch next to your brother, and you’re both talking, but you’re not looking at each other.

“Why?”

You sigh. “Well, when I first saw him, I was like… holy shit, what a _ridiculous_ guy. He’s really awkward, like, his height – it’s awkward – and his glasses are so huge and nerdy, and his teeth, I just… he looks really weird at a first glance, okay, so I thought he was ridiculous.” You laugh a bit. “I didn’t even know his name until I saw him next, so I kept referring to him in my head as ‘the weird guy’ and ‘the ridiculous guy’ and stuff.”

“God, you’re so weird.”

“Pff. Shut up, Bro, you’re even more weird.”

“We’ve been through this. Liking puppets does not make me super weird.”

You shoot Bro a weird look. “Dude, you don’t _like_ puppets. You have an unhealthy obsession of puppets. Before you cleaned all this shit up there used to be fucking _piles_ of them in here.”

Bro looks at you blankly, and you raise your eyebrows at him. “I’ve seen the apple juice in your closet,” he says plainly, and you squeak.

“You fucking shit!” you hiss. “Did you take any?”

He laughs, and it almost makes you smile. “Even if I did you probably wouldn’t notice. There was so fucking much, I swear.”

You blush a bit and frown at him. “Excuse you, I count up that shit.”

“How often?”

“Um.”

Bro laughs again, and you smile this time.

“Whatever, man. You have your unhealthy obsessions and I have mine.” He smiles back at you now, and you’re glad you’re both actually getting along now.

“So what about this John guy?” Bro asks you. “Since you were just talking about him.”

“Huh?”

“What’s the deal with him?”

“He’s my friend…?”

Bro leans close to you and you get a little scared. “I don’t think that’s the case,” he whispers, and you squeak a little.

“W-what do you think the ‘case’ is, then?” you ask nervously. God, you really hope he’s not going to be a dick about this.

“You tell me,” Bro responds, and you sigh. He’s going to make you dig your own fucking grave, isn’t he.

“Well, well, uh,” you say, and you feel really stupid for sounding so nervous. “I mean, I met him a while ago? I kind of walked past him in the street and I thought he was interesting and then I actually met him and I kept seeing him more and more and more? And maybe, _maybe_ we’ve kissed a few times and—“

“Okay,” he says, interrupting you. His indifferent, almost scary expression softens a little, but that doesn’t make you any less nervous.

“What?”

“I don’t have any issues with you being with him,” Bro says, sitting back a little more into the couch. “Just wanted you to be honest with me.”

“I barely told you anything, though,” you mutter, and Bro jabs you.

“Hey. It’s a hard thing to try to tell people about.”

“But I _wasn’t_ trying…?”

He quirks an eyebrow at you and you sigh. “Okay, well. I guess I was conflicted about it or whatever,” you tell him.

Bro just sighs and pats your shoulder a bit. “You’re really stupid, you know that?”

You nod. “Yeah, I guess. But you’re stupid too.”

Bro smiles one of the smallest smiles back at you. “Yeah. I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several times I've written multiple chapters and then deemed them shitty or unnecessary, and deleted them, so sometimes I have things in my mind that I think happened in the story that didn't actually happen since I deleted those chapters.  
> Um. If that made sense, if I ever kind of deviate from the actual storyline could you let me know? Like I actually wrote a chapter a while back about how Dave actually misplaced his books but I deleted it ugahglsdfja.  
> Also! I have a tumblr! Does anyone want it? We can all become friends and stuff.  
> laughs obnoxiously.  
> I'm really dumb though so maybe nobody will like my tumblr. sigh.  
> Okay, I'm gonna shut up now!  
> Thank you!  
> (I have most of the next chapter written, hehe! Hopefully I can post it after lunch.)


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my goodnness, i am actually in the middle of writing this chapter right now  
> it continues on afte r where i left it off on this but right when i was in the middle of writing, i felt a really bad stinging pain in my finger and i looked down and it was actuaally blreeding? so my finger hurts too much to bend it and type so im typing with juust my left hand right now  
> sorry about this ajjhhh i dont have any bandages so my fingrer is wrapped up in this mAkeeshift toile tpaper thing  
> gosh im so sorry these are like the ugliest chapter notes ebver  
> ill keep writing as soon as i post this though  
> just  
> extremely slowly  
> thank you anyway guys!!

“You know, man, I’m glad I’m not stressing over all this.”

Your name is John, and you’re walking around. You’re taking an extremely indirect path to work today, because you’ve gotten yourself in a really, really _thoughtful_ mood, and you want to sort yourself out before you get there.

“Seriously!” you continue. “Dave and all. And my dad. Usually I think I’d be an anxious mess over this kind of thing, but I think I’m comfortable enough with Dave as it is that it’s not so much of a problem for me.”

You kick a piece of gravel along the sidewalk a few times as you walk until it flies off into the street. “I wonder what I’d do if he broke up with me. God, I hope he doesn’t! It’s so possible though, oh no, what if he does? What am I supposed to do then?”

You look over desperately at your little friend that you’d been talking to this entire time. “Got any ideas?”

The cat walking next to you just meows cheerfully, and you sigh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s not something I need to worry so much about.

“I need to be positive, right? Positive!”

You smile to yourself, and look back down at your friend. “You’ve been such a huge help, Mr. Cat.”

He meows back at you, and you giggle. “Gosh, you’re so cute.” You stop and kneel down next to him, and he goes right up to you and rubs along your knee. “You’re such a sweet cat!” you declare. “You’re not all like, ‘ew, a _person_ , I’m gonna go be an indifferent weirdo’.”

Your little friend meows a few more times, and you just smile at him and pet his head a bit. He doesn’t seem to really have a home: he was wandering around in your yard this morning and followed after you when you went out to go to work.

You stand back up after a minute and continue on your way, with your kitty friend close next to you. You’re wondering if he’s going to try to follow you into the store, and if he does, what will happen if you let him. You know you probably shouldn’t, but he was so helpful, and he seems like he really likes you! What if he stayed outside and ran away, or he got snatched up by somebody, or if he wandered off to the wrong place and got himself hurt?

Is this what having a child is like?!

No, John, that’s silly. You dismiss that thought. Cats ≠ children.

Gosh.

You are worried about your kitty friend, though, and in the end, the process of going into the store is a heartbreaking and tear-jerking experience.

Once you’re done crying, though, you settle down behind the register like usual and try to focus on your work. However, it’s so difficult, because Mr. Cat is staring you down through the window in the door and he looks so _lonely_ and you just want to cry all over again and –

“John.”

You scream for a moment, then you hesitantly come out from behind the register and over to the door. “D-did you just… Mr. Cat…?”

“John!”

You scream again. The cat is talking to you the cat is talking to you the cat is talking to you the _cat is talking to you the cat is talking to you the cat is talking to you_ –

“John, shut up!”

You squeak and spin around, and jump a little when you see Rose behind you. “R-Rose! What are you still doing here?” you manage.

“I was going to take your shift today,” she says. “Since you covered mine when I was sick the other day.”

“Aw, but Rose, you don’t have to do that!” you say cheerfully.

“Yes, but I don’t like being indebted to people,” she says, and your smile falters a bit.

“Uhh… okay, then? Should I go home?” you ask, and she shrugs.

You decide to stay, but after several minutes of just standing around awkwardly and trying not to get in Rose’s way, you reconsider, and wind up leaving anyway – solely to avoid so much awkwardness, you tell yourself.

Also you get to go spend more time with Mr. Cat.

You wave awkwardly at Rose and she waves back, and you hurry outside and start walking down back toward your home. Mr. Cat follows you, and honestly it makes you feel a little better.

“I guess I have the day off then, little guy,” you say as you walk. “Wonder if Dave wants to go do something.”

Mr. Cat mewls at you a few times, and you smile at him. “You’re such a great guy. I wonder where you came from.”

You don’t talk much after that, and you walk along with Mr. Cat all the way back to your house. When you go up to the door, he keeps following you, and you stop and look down at him.

“If you come inside I’ll just get even more attached to you, little kitty,” you say. You then have sort of a staring contest with him, as you debate with yourself whether to let him in or not. You finally sigh and give in, opening the door wide enough for him to fit in with you as you walk in.

You expected him to just zip away as soon as you shut the door, but he just stands there and watches you, seeming to wait for you to make the decision of where to go. You smile at him and simply head into the living room, plopping down on the couch. Right away Mr. Cat scurries in and hops up next to you, curling up in your lap. He’s a cute cat: he’s kind of small, but he’s _really_ fat, and you’re surprised at the weight you feel on your legs when he lies down there.

“Wow, you’re a chubby little guy, aren’t you?” you say, petting him gently. “You’re gonna cut off the circulation in my legs.”

Mr. Cat meows at you, annoyed, and you giggle. “Sorry, kitty. It’s true, though!”

You sigh happily and look down at him. He’s completely white, except for one black spot down near his front left paw. He kind of reminds you of those lucky cat things, and you wonder if he’ll actually make you lucky.

“Mm, I think maybe I should call you Lucky instead of Mr. Cat,” you say idly, thinking out loud. You really like this cat, and you want to keep him, and you’re pretty sure your dad will be okay with it… but really, he’s clearly well-fed and probably already has a home.

You sigh, and decide that you’ll just put up some posters about him to see if anyone’s missing him. (You’ll give it two weeks – then you’re _so_ keeping him.)

You still have some Monsters left. You were drinking them yesterday, and then Dave called, and you think you cried or something, but then you just went home and slept for the rest of the day and you don’t remember much.

Briefly you consider what you would be like if you ever got drunk. (You dismiss that thought with extensive disapproval.)

Mr. Cat, or Lucky, or whatever, is falling asleep on your lap, so you try not to move too much. However, you really want to reach over and grab the remote so you can watch something, but you just… can’t… reach it….

Ugh.

You apologize in advance to Mr. Cat and lean over, grabbing the remote and turning on the TV. The volume is at an ungodly high level, so you scream a little bit and mute it quickly.

Mr. Cat is still asleep. What a trooper.

But now you have to unmute the TV so you can actually turn the volume down. Sigh. However, maybe, just _maybe_ , you can manage to turn just the TV off, and then turn the volume down like that.

Yeah. Let’s try that.

Unfortunately, you forgot you were an idiot, so you turned off everything with the wonderful universal remote.

Gosh.

You sigh and settle for watching the TV in complete silence, and you actually start falling asleep at some point.

Until Mr. Cat shifts around and steps all over the fucking remote, and the TV gets unmuted and scares the shit out of you. You squeak and fumble for the remote, desperately turning the TV back off and sitting up. Mr. Cat scurried away off your lap when the TV blasted a second time, and you sigh.

You kind of want to go see Dave or something, since you’ve got the day off like this, but hey: he’s got a life too, you can’t be all clingy and stuff. Also you have a cat to take care of today.

You hope he’s not hungry. You don’t actually have any cat stuff.

Ugh.

You spend a lot of time lying in your bed slipping in and out of consciousness for the next few hours while Mr. Cat lies happily over your stomach. When you finally actually wake up, the phone is ringing, your room is drenched in dark, orangey sunlight, and you’re really, really groggy from sleeping so much.

You sigh and carefully get Mr. Cat off of your stomach, and get up and hobble out into the hallway where there’s a phone on the stupid little table out there. You pick up and mumble “hello” in about the grouchiest way possible, and you just about hang up from how loud Dave’s voice is coming through on the other end.

“Dude, open the door,” he says, and you groan.

“Dave, shut up, I feel like I have a hangover,” you respond grumpily, and you hear Dave sigh.

“Seriously, open the door,” he repeats. “I’ve been standing out here on your doorstep for, like, twenty-five minutes.”

You groan, loudly, and hang up the phone. You swear you hear some protests from outside, so you groan again, stumble over to the door, and stare at Dave intensely through the window before simply unlocking it and then wobbling back to your room.

Dave lets himself in and you flop back onto your bed, burying yourself in your blankets and trying to go back to sleep. He comes in and you feel him on top of you for a minute: he’s reaching across you to pick up Mr. Cat.

“Got yourself a cat now, huh?” he asks, and you just groan in response. You hear Mr. Cat purring and Dave sits down on your bed, scooting over to the opposite side, next to you. You feel him put Mr. Cat back down between the both of you, and you sigh exasperatedly when Mr. Cat crawls up and lies on your pillow right above your head.

You slide over to the side to get a little more space from Mr. Cat, and Dave takes this opportunity to lie down next to you and hug you close to him. Mr. Cat scoots over along with you and lies above your head again, and eventually, after much shifting and squirming around, you decide to just give up and lie there and let everybody love you.

You don’t think you’re going to fall back asleep anytime soon, though, because after several minutes Dave pulls out his phone and starts playing a game on it, and you can hear little gamey noises coming from it.

You sigh and bury yourself deeper in your blankets, and this time only Mr. Cat follows you. He scoots himself down and makes himself comfortable on your stomach like he was before, and you close your eyes and pet him idly.

Eventually, very much _eventually_ , you finally do fall asleep again to Mr. Cat purring and Dave playing his games.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'm uploading this right at the end of lunch so I haven't had much time to look over it. It might not be perfect but I'm trying to get it in since I won't even be home for a little while since I have detention today. (yayyy.)

A while later you wake up, and it’s really, really dark in your room. You pull yourself up out of your blankets, Mr. Cat in tow, and glance over at Dave to see that now _he’s_ asleep. You consider waking him up, since he woke you up earlier to get you to open the door. You decide that might be fun, so you take Mr. Cat and place him on Dave’s head, where he shifts around a lot and walks off and down along Dave’s body. This makes Dave groan and swat at you, mumbling a “John, you’re a dick”. Then he sits up, and rubs his eyes, and you sit up too.

You both just sit there in silence for a little while, and Mr. Cat wanders around aimlessly on the edge of the bed. It’s quiet, and dark, and you glance around your room idly while Dave yawns and tries to wake up more. After a few minutes you heave a sigh and stand up, walking out of your room and leaving Dave behind. You go on over to the kitchen and get yourself some graham crackers, leaning on the counter and eating them lazily.

Dave comes wandering out next to you after a few minutes, holding Mr. Cat. He stands next to you, puts Mr. Cat down, and steals one of your graham crackers, and you don’t even protest, and he doesn’t even comment on your failure at that.

You’re both way too fucking tired today.

“I told Bro about you,” Dave says absentmindedly, eating the cracker he stole slowly. You just nod slowly in response, not really comprehending what he said.

Basically for a while you were both pretty absent and idle. You get yourself into that thoughtful mood again, thinking about lots of things. You wonder if maybe you should try to get to know Rose a little better. She seems really nice, even if you’re a little awkward around her. Maybe you should get Dave to meet her, and get to know her too. You think they’ll do a lot of dumb stuff together if they get to be good friends, honestly. It’ll probably be funny.

“Holy shit,” Dave suddenly says, pulling you from your thoughts. “Dude.”

“What?” you ask, shooting him a weird look.

“You don’t have a cell phone.”

“No…?”

“But when I first saw you,” Dave continues, “and you crossed the street, you answered a phone when you passed by me.”

You completely forgot about that. “Oh, yeah,” you say. “Um.”

“Why don’t you have it anymore?”

You have to think a minute, because you didn’t have it for long. “I think it was the really old one my dad had for a while,” you say slowly. “He never used it and he was about to get rid of it, and then I was like wait, I don’t have a phone, let me try it out before you get rid of it… and then I used it for like two days and then we got rid of it because I didn’t like it so much.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Who was calling you?”

“My dad. He called me a lot while I had it just so I could actually use it a little bit or something. Since nobody usually calls us.”

Dave nods, and steals another one of your graham crackers. “Yo, do you have any peanut butter or whatever I could put on this shit? These crackers are boring as fuck.”

You just stare at Dave when he asks you that, and he stares back at you. “What?”

You blink a few times, and he starts looking really confused.

“I’m _allergic_ ,” you say after a few moments, and he finally makes the connection.

“Oh.”

“I thought you’d be able to figure that out.”

“How? You were just looking at me weird and it made me doubt if peanut butter actually existed for a few moments there.”

You laugh a little bit. “Yeah, I guess maybe just a look wouldn’t help you at all.”

“No, maybe not.”

“Wait, holy shit,” Dave says suddenly. “So you can’t have Nutella and Reese’s stuff and shit like that?”

“No,” you say plainly. “And I don’t really want to…?”

“Oh,” he says, and he looks like he’s having some kind of crisis. “Oh, God, that hurts to think about. What about when you were a little dorky kid and you brought, like, PB&J to school? Did you just have the J part? Did you stumble through your elementary school days with nothing but boring jelly sandwiches with a side of _disappointment_?”

“Jelly sandwiches with a side of disappointment,” you repeat. “Dave, you’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“That thing where you obsess over stuff and go a little bit crazy over them. You’re saying weird crap again.”

“But it’s _peanut butter_ ,” Dave protests. “Peanut butter makes up, like, 70% of the good things in life.”

“70%? Did you just, like, make that up?”

Dave shoots you a funny look. “John, percentages represent pieces of a whole, and 100% is the entire thing, and so 70% would be part of it—“

“Dave.”

“Yeah?”

“I was talking about the value of the percentage.”

“Oh. Yes. Yes, I made that up.”

“Of course you did.”

“I pride myself in these things, John,” Dave says, and you can just _feel_ him diving into another obsessive speech of his. “My exaggerated, fake statistics; my dramatic, overly passionate monologues about _totally important things_ like peanut butter; the stupid things I do just because they’re…! They’re…!”

He looks like he’s about to give himself a heart attack, and you just stare at him while he takes a deep breath.

“Ironic,” he whispers, and a single tear rolls down his cheek.

You stare at him wordlessly for a few minutes, and he wipes his cheek off.

“Are you okay, Dave?” you ask. “Really. I’m legitimately concerned about you.”

“No, I’m just being a, um… I’m being facetious.”

“That sounds like a big word for you,” you comment.

“Wow, um, rude, John,” Dave responds, and you giggle.

“I’m trying to be facetious,” you say, and you laugh to yourself. Dave smiles at you, and you giggle some more. You’ve got yourself in a very giggly mood now, and you have to put the graham crackers down. “Jelly sandwiches with a side of disappointment,” you say, and this makes you laugh some more. “Imagine, like, a restaurant, and they have jelly sandwiches and then in the sides it just says ‘disappointment’ and everybody’s like whaaat and it’s just so funny…!” You pause a moment to try to stop laughing. “And then I come in and I’m like oh hey!!! I ate this stuff every day in elementary school because I’m allergic to peanuuuuuuts!!”

You descend into a fit of laughter after that, and Dave laughs too, shooting you some looks every now and then. Once you calm down he hugs you tightly, and you grin and hug him back.

It’s this point in time that Mr. Cat decides to bring attention to his existence, and he starts meowing loudly from where he’s been sitting on the floor.

You and Dave let go of each other when he does that, and Dave is the one that picks up Mr. Cat and looks at him weird.

“Does this guy have a name?” he asks, and you shrug.

“I’ve sort of been calling him Mr. Cat,” you say. “But he reminds me of one of those lucky cat things that sit there waving at you.”

“Mr. Cat, then, huh?” Dave says, and you nod. “Where’d he come from? Is he yours or something?”

“Nah,” you answer. “He was in our yard earlier and he followed me when I went to work. And then I went home, um, way earlier than usual, and he was still following me. I think he’s lost or something so I’m gonna put some posters up soon.”

“Did he follow you into the store?” Dave asks, examining Mr. Cat idly. “Can he even do that?”

“No, he just stayed outside and stared me down through the window. It was kind of distracting.”

Dave nods a little and hands Mr. Cat to you, and you hold him for a moment before setting him back down on the ground. He seems satisfied for now, and just sits there patiently by your feet while you retrieve your graham crackers again.

“Are we just going to stand here in my kitchen all night, or do you want to go do something?” you ask Dave, absently taking a little bite out of one of the crackers.

“You could play,” Dave says, and you smile a bit.

“Yeah, I could.”

“Will you?”

“Sure.”

You hand Dave the graham crackers (which elicits a “yessss” from him) and head off toward the old room with the piano, and Mr. Cat follows you, who in turn is followed by Dave.

“I have a question,” Dave asks as you walk. It sounds like he has a mouth full of crackers, and you laugh at him a bit.

“Yeah?”

“So, since you’re allergic to peanuts,” he says, and you hear him take out another cracker, “what if I, like, ate a sandwich or something that had peanut butter, and then I went and kissed you a lot. Made out with you, basically. Would you have a reaction from that?”

You blush, and smile a bit. “I have no idea,” you say. “God, there’s so much weird stuff in your head, Dave.”

“Yep,” he agrees, eating another graham cracker.

You step into the room a few seconds later, and it’s really cold in there. You dig around a moment next to the piano and get out a thick blanket you like to keep in here when it gets cold like this, and sit down on the bench, wrapping yourself up in it. Dave sits next to you, and you feel Mr. Cat situate himself by your feet. You lift up the lid over the keys – does that thing even have a technical name? – and gently place your fingers in their proper places.

Dave is eager, you can tell, and it makes you smile before you start playing something from memory.

It’s a nice song, you think: it starts out kind of quiet, and happy-sounding, but then it gets louder and more serious. When you play it it makes you imagine little scenes in your head, like scenes in a movie where this music is playing in the background to set the mood. It always makes you imagine movement. At first, at the beginning, you imagine something like somebody walking leisurely along a sidewalk on a nice day, and then when it gets more serious you imagine someone running along that sidewalk, and the day is a little darker in a late afternoon.

It’s nice to do that, and you like it. Music is cool.

Dave doesn’t say anything the whole time you’re playing; he doesn’t even eat any of the crackers. Mr. Cat shifts around a little, though, and eventually he seems to find amusement in pressing the pedals under the piano, which randomly cuts off your notes or makes them resonate too much. It makes you giggle, and Dave smiles at you.

The piece ends after a few minutes, and you smile to yourself and lean back to look at Mr. Cat under the piano. “Was that fun for you?” you ask, and he meows at you and then presses the pedals some more.

“That was cool,” Dave says, hugging you and kissing your cheek. You grin at him and take his hands, smiling at him for a second before kissing him gently. Mr. Cat hops up on your lap while you’re doing this and it makes you laugh, but Dave just pulls you closer and kisses you back slowly. However, you laugh even more when Mr. Cat starts walking along the piano keys, and Dave laughs too, letting you go and kissing your nose.

“I can play something else, if you want. That one wasn’t original.”

Dave shrugs. “Whatever you wanna do. I could listen to you all day, honestly.”

“We should do that sometime, then,” you answer. “I could play music for you all day, and you’d get to listen with Mr. Cat.”

“That’d be cool,” he says. “But do you even have enough music to play for an entire day?”

“Guess not,” you say, thinking. “I could just play all night for you, then. I guess. God, this was kind of a dumb idea in the first place.”

“I make music too,” Dave says. “Sort of.”

“What, really?” you say, perking up a little. “That’s cool. Why’d you never mention that?”

He shrugs. “It’s because I’m really, really shitty compared to you.”

“Pff, I’m sure you’re fine,” you say. “What do you do?”

“I mix shit,” he says, shrugging again. “I have turntables and stuff.”

“I’ve always wanted to try one of those!!” you squeak, and this brings a smile out of Dave. “They’ve always looked pretty cool to me, really.”

“You’ll have to show me sometime,” you say.

“I guess so. But first, you’ve got to play for me for the rest of the night. Until I fall asleep again or something.”

You smile. “Sure, but you’ll have to keep Mr. Cat away from the piano.”

“Sure.”

Soon after that, Dave was sitting on the floor wrapped up in your blanket, leaning against the side of the piano with Mr. Cat in his lap. You started playing once he got settled down: first some cool, moving pieces you’ve always liked, then some slower, quieter ones.

You stopped when Dave finally fell asleep, and you wound up falling asleep with your face on the keys like you used to when you were little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I've gotten multiple requests and ideas from people.
> 
> One of my friends actually requested some cotton candy (Jane and Roxy), where I suppose they're older, and Roxy works at a bar or something. Jane comes in and gets drunk and they have this one night standy sort of thing, but they actually see each other more and more after that and it eventually develops into an actual relationship.
> 
> I got a request from my other friend for some kind of trollcops thing with Terezi, Vriska and Sollux I think? I think she got the idea from some art I showed her.
> 
> One prompt that RhymeReason gave was for a school thing where um  
> "Imagine your OTP as students and they share dorms. Person B runs off into an abandon classroom to vent/cry when they are bullied to an extent. But Person A later on finds Person B and makes them promise to not leave if they are upset, but instead talk to him/her for comfort."
> 
> I got a gamtav request from DD that would be along the lines of the RhymeReason thing above.
> 
> Another was from anon for a high school thing (likely johndave) where John and Dave are roommates, and Dave starts out hating John, but John actually falls in love with Dave and Dave manages to like him back somehow at some point.
> 
> RabidWeezul left an extremely long thing that I found very, very helpful.
> 
> Okay, I'm not trying to drag this out too much since I'm rushing to upload this in class, but that's the gist of things I think? I'll say more on the next update, I guess.
> 
> Thank you!


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!  
> I didn't realize deleting that other chapter would delete the comments too, I'm so sorry about that!  
> I don't have much to say this time, except I've made a tiny bit of progress on my friend's cotton candy request. I think I'm definitely going to try to write that other one where Dave hates John at first - that should be really fun.  
> One more thing! I wrote another fic, it's just a little drabble. I uploaded it to here (http://archiveofourown.org/works/721508) if you want to read it!  
> Thank you!

Your name is Dave, and you’re attempting to pull together some shit that’s _actually decent_ to show John, since he wanted you to show him your “music”. You both woke up pretty late in the day after he played for you last night, and John was panicking because he had to go work. You kind of wanted to go home, so that’s what you did, and for the past few hours you’ve been getting all your shit together to try to make it presentable.

You’re digging through all your songs that you’ve saved on your computer now, and trying to find some that are actually good. It’s taking a really long time to listen to them, and you’re finding all sorts of things wrong with the ones you’ve been listening to. You’re dying to fix them and make them better, but there’s just _so many_ that you’re considering just mixing something completely new. That would be difficult too, though, since you haven’t made anything new in a _really_ long time, and you’re really not feeling very inspired right now.

Music is so hard.

In the end you just wind up heaving about a trillion sighs and just shutting down your computer and flopping onto your bed. From that point you stare at your ceiling for about twenty minutes until you decide to go make yourself some of those pizza roll things.

You seriously pray that they don't, like, explode like they did last time.

So you get up and wander off into your kitchen, grab a box of the things, and dump them out on a plate so you can microwave them. You think they’re supposed to go in the oven or some shit, but you don’t have time for that.

They’re goddamn _pizza rolls_.

You put them in the microwave and set the time and all that, and then you’re stuck waiting for them to finish. You don’t even understand why they put a serving size on this shit. Nobody’s gonna eat, like, six of them when they can just eat all fifteen instead.

They’re goddamn pizza rolls and nobody understands.

Once they’re done you take your plate out and poke a few of them. Sometimes they don’t actually get microwaved or some shit and they’re still cold and you’re like dude what the fuck but this time they all seem okay.

So you take one and eat it, and then wander back to your room with the plate. You sit back down at your desk and turn your computer back on, scrolling back through some of your songs and trying to pick out the ones that aren’t 100% shit. This time you’re also trying to pace yourself with the pizza rolls because you usually just stuff your face with them.

After a little while, when you’re at the point of having four pizza rolls left, Bro comes in to your room and dumps a small pile of puppets on your floor. You groan and swivel your chair around to face him, and when he tries to leave you stop with a “whoa, man, hold the fuck up”.

“What?” he responds, turning back around. “I’m putting all the smuppets and shit back.”

“Why?” you ask, eating one of the pizza rolls. “I mean, shit, I don’t care if you put them back, just don’t put them back where there’s a high concentration of Dave.”

“Did you seriously just fucking say that?”

“Maybe.”

You smirk to yourself, and you see the corner of Bro’s mouth quirk up just a little. You both just stare at each other from behind your shades like this, and you eat another pizza roll.

“Nah, I’m putting them back where they used to be.”

“Fuck.”

Bro laughs and leaves your room again, and you see him come in and out of the hallway with little armloads of puppets, dumping them in random places throughout the apartment. Before too long he comes back into your room and drops off whatever’s left on the floor, and you groan again. This time he stops and sits on your bed, and you swivel around some more to face him again.

“So, what ‘cha working on?” he asks you.

“I’m going through my old shit,” you answer. “John was all, show me your music!! but honestly I think it sucks too much.”

“He should listen to some of my stuff. Honestly, you’re no good for him.”

“Are you trying to steal my man?” you ask, raising an eyebrow, and Bro grins at you.

“Of course I am.”

You sigh and lean back in your chair a little more, eating the next-to-last pizza roll. “Yeah, well, you can’t have him. He wouldn’t want you anyway because you’re old and gross.”

“I’m not gross!” Bro declares. “Look at this body.”

You laugh. “You’re totally gross.”

“I am not.”

“You so are.”

“I won’t hesitate to strip right here and now.”

“Please don’t.”

Bro smirks at you, and you rub a head a little bit. You love him and all, sure, but sometimes he can seriously give you a headache.

“Stripping aside,” he says after a few moments, “I’ve been forgetting to ask you about those new shades you’ve got.”

“What?” you ask, reaching up to feel around the frames of your shades. “Oh. Yeah, John got these for me. I thought I told you.”

“Nah. But you said a little while back that you lost them ‘cause he dropped them on the floor or some shit.”

“Yeah,” you say, nodding a bit. “Shit, that was a while ago, but yeah. Apparently he couldn’t find them, so he got me new ones.”

“Mm,” Bro responds. “That’s cool.”

You both sit there a bit awkwardly after that. You look around on your computer some more for another decent song, and when you reach for the last pizza roll you feel Bro smack your hand away.

“Gimme,” he says, and you look over at him to see he actually got up from your fucking bed and walked over to you just to do that. For one pizza roll. One goddamn pizza roll.

“Dude,” you say. “I made them. Back the fuck off.”

“I will throw you out in the street.”

You squint at Bro, and he reaches very slowly for the pizza roll, but you slap _his_ hand away and put the plate on your desk.

“You wanna go, Bro?”

“Hell yeah I wanna go,” he responds. “I’m gonna get that fucking pizza roll.”

“Bring it.”

You stand up from your chair and Bro steps back from you a bit, and in two seconds you’ve pulled out your sword and Bro’s pulled out his and you’re both quite literally at each other’s throats.

You try to push him away from you, but he just leans out of the way and tries to stab at you from the side. You block it and step away a few feet, and then come charging up at him.

Really, your room is not the best place for this.

When you run at him he whips out Lil’ Cal and whacks you in the face with him, and you pull a face and step back again. You edge over to the side a bit, closer to your desk, and Bro flings Cal at you. You dodge him, but then Bro grabs you and shoves you back pretty hard.

This causes you to crash into your desk. You knock the plate with the pizza roll off onto the floor, and for a moment you’re really feeling the sorrow from this, until you lose your balance, falling down onto the plate and crushing the pizza roll.

Now you feel absolutely horrible. Also there’s sauce on your arm.

“Oh, hell no,” Bro says.

“Shit.”

“I’m going to fuck you up.”


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Saint Patrick's day guys.  
> This chapter's kind of short, but I was having a weird feels crisis and I think it just would have been easier for me to write for Dave rather than John today. It was crazy, like, I woke up this morning and I just had all these feels for John like WOW UGH JOHN ATTTRACTIVE and I actually cried multiple times and it was insane and I still ahve all the ese john feels plEASE SOMEONE RP JOHNDAE VE FWITH ME   
> wow ok omg um  
> Yeah, so this one's a little short!  
> Thank you!

“I… oh.”

Your name is John.

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, I guess. Yeah. ‘Bye, Rose.”

You hang up and set the phone down and sigh, then sit there in silence for a few minutes, followed by another sigh. You repeat this process several times until you finally pick up the phone again and dial Dave’s number. It rings for a while, but nobody ever picks up, and you don’t bother leaving a message.

_Sigh_.

You get up from where you’d been sulking on your bed and wander around aimlessly in your house for a period until you finally just collapse on the couch.

Everything’s just really, really shitty now. You wonder what Dave’s doing; you really wish you could get hold of him. You sulk like this for a while until you decide that _yes_ , you’re going to get hold of Dave, because you need a distraction.

You halfheartedly shuffle out of your house and head for his apartment, assuming that’s where he is. Whatever. If he’s not, you’ll probably just flop in front of his door and wait there until he gets back.

The walk there is fairly uneventful. When you pass the music store you pause in front of it for a good minute or so, just looking inside and staring at your reflection in the windows. That’s about it, though: the rest of the walk you just stare at your feet as you walk. It’s a miracle you didn’t get hit by a car or walk into anything.

When you get up to Dave’s apartment it turns out _somebody’s_ in there, and whoever it is is making a lot of noise. You groan and knock on the door, and after a moment it comes swinging open, and Dave smiles at you for a split second before getting shoved out of the doorway pretty hard. You hear a crash and the sound of something breaking, and you’re a bit afraid to go in until someone yanks you inside and tosses you on the couch.

You’re very disoriented and confused, and once you pull yourself together you see that Bro and Dave are doing that thing with the swords again. Oh yes. _Fighting_.

You want to say something, but then you decide it would probably be safest for you to just sit on the couch and pretend you don’t exist until they’re done. It’s a bit unsettling to watch Dave come so close to being stabbed and having his throat cut and things like that, though, but every time he looks at you he gives you a reassuring smile, so… you’re trying not to worry so much.

He and his brother make their way around the apartment stabbing at each other and breaking things, and when Dave trips and falls over some puppets you actually really get concerned for him – Bro didn’t hesitate to slash at him.

You’re trying not to worry, but you are anyway, so you look away and try to focus on the puppets everywhere. They were gone for a while, and now they’re all back, and this kind of scares you a little bit. You wonder where they all came from, and what they’re for. Really, they’re starting to intrigue you greatly, and you find yourself really wanting to touch one or something. They’re just so _interesting_.

But before you can become too smitten with the puppets, you hear a scream and another crash, and the clatter of a sword on the floor. After that the noise Dave and Bro were making is gone, and you’re _really_ concerned now.

You look over and scream a bit when you see blood. You can’t see everything since they’d moved on into the kitchen, so you get up and hurry over. Dave goes shoving past you before you can actually get a good look, and you’re relieved he’s okay, but….

You look over into the kitchen and see Bro getting up from the floor. There’s a few gashes in his arm, and there’s some blood smeared on the floor where Dave dropped his sword. You have no idea what to say, so you just stand there in silence while Bro looks around for something to try to stop the bleeding with. Dave hurries back a few minutes later with bandages and such, and you attempt to make yourself useful while he fixes up Bro by grabbing some paper towels and trying to clean up the blood on the floor.

“Fuck, Bro,” you hear Dave say. “I didn’t mean to do that, shit, I’m sorry.”

Bro doesn’t say anything, and after you wipe up the blood, you go back and sit on the couch again. Dave and Bro come back out a few minutes later, and Bro’s arm is wrapped up pretty well, and he doesn’t look like he’s in much pain, so you’re grateful for that, you guess.

Dave goes and puts the bandages and stuff away, then he comes and grabs you and yanks you up and back into his room, slamming his door. You don’t know what to say to him, and you don’t think he knows what to say either, so you both just stand there in silence for a while until he finally collapses into his chair at his desk.

“I guess I’m finally getting better than him, huh?”

Dave smiles the slightest smile at you, and you nod. “I guess.”

“I didn’t mean to do that, though,” he continues. “Fuck. I feel like shit now, honestly.”

You sigh, still at a loss of what to say, and Dave continues. “That’s never happened before, actually? Like, we do this shit all the time, but we’ve never actually stabbed each other or anything.”

“Maybe you should stop.”

Dave doesn’t say anything for a little bit, but then he nods and sighs. “Maybe.”

You go and sit on Dave’s bed, and he doesn’t swivel around to face you. He’s just idly rotating the chair back and forth, staring at the floor. You’re still not sure what to say, and Dave’s not saying anything, and you hate feeling useless like this.

You heave a pretty big sigh.

“Rose called me earlier.”

“Yeah?” This time Dave actually spins around to face you, and he looks a bit better. “What’d she say?”

“The store’s gonna close.”

Dave’s expression falls back into that bummed out look again, and you sigh once more.

“Today is a pretty shitty day, isn’t it?” he asks, and you nod.

“Yeah.”

You both just sit there for a few minutes, and then Dave reaches over next to his desk and pulls out one of those huge bags of gummy bears you both got a little while ago. “I still haven’t eaten all these,” he says. “Wanna help me out with them?”

You smile at him and nod, and he smiles back at you and comes over, sitting next to you on the bed. He sets the bag down between you both and grabs a handful of the gummy bears, and he’s eaten all of them before you can even get down six.

“Are you trying to figure out how many you can fit in your mouth at once?” you ask, and Dave looks hurt.

“Rude,” he says. “If you’re gonna make cracks at how I eat I’ll kick you out right here and now.”

“Make sure you swallow first, then,” you say. “Wouldn’t want you choking from tossing me outside.”

Dave takes off his shades just to squint at you, and you laugh. “You’re a dork, Dave.”

He gasps. “I am not! I’m _cool_.” He holds up his shades and waves them at you. “Cooool. Do you see these shades? They’re _cooool_.”

“Would you feel better if I said you were _my_ dork?”

Dave gasps and nods slowly. “Yes. Yes I would.”

You giggle. “Then you’re a dork, Dave,” you say, leaning across the gummy bears and hugging him. “But you’re _my_ dork.”

“Woot,” Dave says quietly, and you giggle and kiss his cheek.

“I do wonder, though,” you say thoughtfully, “how many gummy bears you could stuff in your mouth at once?”

“Let’s do it.”

“I’ll give you a dollar for every single one you get in there.”

“Oh hell yes.”

-

Ten minutes and twenty-six gummy bears later Dave is screaming at you with his mouth full and you’re trying so hard to stop laughing, but it’s _really hard_ , and then you laugh so hard you fall off the bed and Dave takes about five minutes to manage all the gummy bears down. After he does that he has a coughing fit and falls off the bed, landing gracefully on top of you. You yell and try to shove him off, but he just pulls himself together and latches on to you.

“Dave!”

“John!”

“Dave!!”

“Oh, _John_!”

“Daaaave!”

“Ohhhh, _JOHN_! _Yes_!”

“What the fuck is going on in here?”

You hear the door slam open and you scream, and Dave just laughs and lets go of you, standing up. You whimper a few times and roll yourself under Dave’s bed, and try not to listen to Dave’s bullshit story to Bro which he is telling right this precise moment in the present time which you are in.

You scoot yourself out from under the bed enough to see Bro, and all he does is shake his head and walk back out, shutting the door behind him. Dave laughs and turns to you, lying down on the floor and grinning at you. You frown at him and poke his nose, and he screams.

“Violence is _not_ the answer, John.”

“Fuck you, Dave.”

“Language.”

“Fuck your language, too.”

Dave laughs some more and drags you out from under the bed, leaning over and kissing your cheeks a few times. You roll your eyes and sit up a little bit, pulling him closer and kissing him gently. He smiles and returns it, and you almost laugh because he tastes like gummy bears.

You both kiss for a while, actually, there on his floor, and you finally stop when you’re both totally out of breath. He smiles at you, and you smile back at him, and you hug him gently and kiss him a few more times before stopping for real and resting your head on his shoulder.

“Dork.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In other news I changed my tumblr url this morning and I changed my theme last night! If you try to go to my old url there should be a link there that goes to my new one, but if you can't find it just ask me about it!  
> I haven't been feeling too inspired lately, so I might take a little while to get started on requests and stuff. I do want to do them, it just might take me a little while.  
> (Also if you've followed me, and your url is, like, drastically different than the name you use on here to comment, please send me a message! I want to get to know you guys! Well, I mean, only if you want to, though. You don't have to. I'm just pretty sure some of you from here followed me and I just have no idea who you are, is all, and... aheh, I'll just shut up.)  
> Oh, and I'm sorry I suck at writing people smooching. I have p much no experience on that stuff.  
> Thanks!


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kind of very short! Sorry about that.

You hang out with Dave on his floor for a while, and you pass that time by doing this weird alternating thing between watching Dave play games on his phone and kissing him. It’s a pretty dumb and irregular way to spend time, but it’s nice anyway, and even though his floor is uncomfortable you find yourself starting to fall asleep sitting there with him. When Dave notices he grins and apparently decides to take the opportunity to pick you up, and you squeak and cling to him for dear life when he does.

He laughs at you and dumps you onto his bed, and you quickly scoot away from him to the other side of it and bury yourself in his blankets. He gets in next to you and you try to shove him away, but he manages to get up to you and smooch your cheek anyway. He only laughs some more when you squeak, and you finally just turn around and try to glare at him.

Dave makes a kissy face at you and you try to push him away, but he takes the opportunity to grab your arm and pull you closer to him, effectively wrapping his arms around you and trapping you there with him.

“Now you’re mine,” he says, and you sigh and try to squirm away. He holds you tighter and kisses your head a few times, and after several moments you give in and hug him, kissing his cheek. He grins and whispers “yesss”, and when that makes you giggle he kisses your cheeks a whole lot, which makes you giggle even more.

“How the hell are you even so cute, John?” Dave asks you, and you smile.

“I don’t know, Dave!” you say. “It’s a mystery.”

He smiles and scoots closer to you, and you reach up and snatch his shades. You take off your glasses and put on the shades, and then Dave steals your glasses and puts them on.

“Oh, wow, this is nice, Dave,” you say. “Everything’s all dim now and it’s making me sleepy.”

“Jesus fuck,” Dave responds. “That’s great and all for you, but shit, how do you even see through these things?” He moves around a little and you giggle. “They keep sliding off my face.”

“Poor you,” you say, and you close your eyes and snuggle up to him. He sighs and takes his shades off your face, and puts both them and your glasses down on the pillow behind your head. He settles down and you can just tell he’s watching you, and it makes you smile to yourself.

“What are you smiling about?” he asks, and you open your eyes and look at him. His mouth is quirked up just a little in a wonderful half-smile, and when you look up at his eyes you can tell he’s tired. He looks so nice to you, though, and you smile widely at him.

“I love you,” you say. That little half-smile of his gets a little bit bigger when you say that, and you hug him and kiss him a few times until he’s smiling fully.

“I love you too…” he whispers, and it sounds like now _he’s_ the one feeling sleepy.

“Heh, go to sleep, Dave.”

-

“So what were the both of you fighting about this time, huh?”

Dave fell asleep a while ago and you fell asleep a long while after him, but you only slept for a few hours, and you’re both awake again. It’s late afternoon, and as soon as Dave woke up he panicked and rushed to go see if Bro was okay. You think he had a nightmare or something about what happened earlier, but he won’t talk about it, so you decided to let that part go.

“I wouldn’t let him have the last pizza roll,” Dave says, “and then when we were fighting over it it kind of got destroyed.”

“I… oh.” You roll your eyes. “Fighting over one pizza roll….”

“One pizza roll that doesn’t even exist anymore.”

“That’s sad, Dave.”

“I know it is,” he says, smiling at you. “It’s so fucking tragic, we gotta make a movie out of this. Gonna write up a nice script to give the fight a little tragic backstory, yeah, and then we can play some real dramatic music during.” He grins, and looks away from you as if he’s envisioning this in his future. “Simple title: How the Last Pizza Roll Died. Shit, when I fall on it we can have some fucking awesome pizza explosion and everyone can die. Nice apocalypse twist there.”

“I… don’t know what to say.”

“But wait, there’s more!” Dave says. “Hehe, I’ve always wanted to say that. Anyway, then, after the apocalypse, it can turn out there’s still one human left over, but he has amnesia, and then he finds the remains of the pizza roll and worships it as a fallen angel or some shit and he starts up this whole pizza roll religion, and it’s trippy as fuck and he has this musical montage through a meadow of pizza rolls or something and then aliens come and they’re like, whoa, a real dude, yo, we thought they was all extinct or some shit, and he’s like, hello friends! join me in the worship of our delicious Lord Pizza Roll, and then they’re like aw hell no let’s get out of here, but then the pizza roll guy winds up totally falling in love with this hot alien chick, and he seduces her with his religious pizza magic, but then there’s this shy little uke alien dude who is like, totally adorbs, and _he_ was in love with Pizza Man, so he’s super jealous of Pizza Man being together with the other girl, so he, like, dramatically confesses his love to Pizza Man. But then, Alien Uke’s English is really shitty, and so Pizza Man couldn’t understand his dramatic confession. So Alien Uke runs away sobbing, and Pizza Man feels like shit, so he dumps his girl and goes to try to see what’s up with Alien Uke instead, and then… um….”

“Dave?”

“Yeees?”

“You’re not… on anything, are you?”

Dave blinks at you, and you raise your eyebrows. “Hell no,” he says. “Drugs aren’t cool.”

“Oh, right.” You smile. “Of course not. And a cool guy like you would never _ever_ be caught _dead_ with them.”

“Exactly.”

“’Alien Uke’, though.”

“Of course.”

“You’re _sure_ you’re not on anything?”

“Why would I be unsure about if I was on drugs or not?”

You shrug. “I don’t know, Dave.”

“I guess I’m just that much of a fucking enigma. Hells yeah.”

“Dave, I think you need to calm down.”

“I appreciate your input, John.”

“You’re welcome, Dave!”

You both grin at each other, and you’re a little confused about what that entire exchange was about. Dave seemed happy, though, so you’re happy too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this was kind of an abrupt place to end, and I apologize, but today is just one of those days when I couldn't think of a single thing to write. Also, I started another fic earlier - http://archiveofourown.org/works/727438 - that I'm going to try to update as fast as I do this one!  
> Unless writer's block rears its ugly head. Groan.  
> Oh my goodness, I found some really great audio posts of some amazing voice acting and wowow I think I'm in love with this Dave's voice omg I'm about to die from all the feels ughgasjfslk  
> Oh, and I saw that two people gave me their tumblrs so I could go and rp with them and such! I followed both of you - I changed my url, so I'm davesies now instead of terererezi - and hopefully I'll babble at you about feels and manage to become your friend. I'm bad at friends. Urg.  
> But yes, so I've got another fic going now! It's going to be multiple chapters, but I don't think I'm going to make it NEARLY as long as this one.  
> Also, if there's anyone else who wants to rp or talk or whatever, I'm davesies.tumblr and I'll be very happy to become your friend. Eheheh.  
> Goodness. I'll stop talking now.  
> Thank you!


	30. not a real update (im so sorry)

Ugh. I've gotten myself some serious writer's block here - I can't come up with anything for any kind of fic ever. I have, like, half of the next chapter of this fic written, but I don't think it's too great and I can't really come up with anything else.

I'll get over this eventually, but if anyone would like to help contribute ideas, please feel free. Where do you guys want this fic to go? Anything you want to happen?

I'm sorry. If I had a good idea I'd write it, but I've barely written three paragraphs over the past few days.

Oh. In other news, I have spring break next week so if I can manage to get over my writer's block I'll be able to write a shitload of stuff. Except for this weekend. I'm going to a con this weekend. Cosplaying karezi with my friend, hehe.

I really feel like I'm not doing so great with this fic anymore - sorry about that. I have an idea of how I want to end this, but I'm not so sure on how to get there. Writing is so hard. I should just go back to my original stuff.

Gahhh. Sorry sorry sorry sorry about being dumb with this. If you've got any suggestions or ideas or if you just really really REALLY REALLY want something to happen, please let me know! (I won't accidentally delete the comments this time, I swear.)

As I think I've said like a billion times, if you want to get hold of me and screech at me about how I haven't updated or if you want to be my friend or something you can come nab me at my tumblr (which is davesies).

Goodness. Again I'm super sorry for not updating and writing badly etc. etc. I'll try to get my act together.

Now to get through the rest of the school day. Later guys.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> screams this chapter is terrible I'm so sorry  
> When I get writer's block it usually doesn't go away for, like, a month, and I forced myself to finish this chapter since it's been so long since I updated and I feel terrible about not updating and I'm so stressed over this fic ohsdkjfalsdfkjas  
> Okay, well. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm back now, and hopefully I'll be back to updating like usual. Yayyy.

You’re Dave, and you just finished a long pizza roll tragic movie ramble. It was a nice distraction while it lasted, but you still feel like complete and utter garbage over injuring Bro. It doesn’t help that John isn’t going to have a job before long, and you really feel like you should do something, but there’s nothing you can think of that will actually help. You never even went and got your sword from where you dropped it, and it’s probably still there, too. Bro probably doesn’t even feel so awful about this, but you just feel like absolute worthless _shit_. You hate feeling so terrible, especially if Bro doesn’t think it’s a big deal, but you and Bro have never actually hurt each other like that before now. It just won’t stop bothering you.

John made some comment about how he was going to go raid your fridge, and before you really acknowledged that he even spoke he’s off into the kitchen and you’re left standing idly in the hallway. You wonder if he has to work today – he usually leaves around this time. You’re pretty sure, anyway.

“Dave, _why_ is there yogurt in here that expired two Octobers ago?” John calls to you, and you gasp, rushing over to him. He’s looking critically at this little tub of the stuff, and you snatch it from him, opening it up and looking at it closely. “Dave?” he asks. “I ate some of this shit, like, yesterday,” you say, and John squeaks.

“A-are you serious?” John asks. “There’s gross stuff on the side! Didn’t you notice?” Then he seems to realize something, and he looks absolutely disgusted. “You were _kissing_ me earlier!”

You both start freaking out over the goddamn yogurt, and somehow it ends up getting thrown out the window while John pours himself about twelve glasses of water and you start prodding yourself to see if you feel sick. Once you determine you’re okay for the moment you open the fridge back up and dig around for more expired shit. You yank out a _lot_ of stuff – probably at least 70% of the things in there were really gross, and it’s when you’re trying to stomp it all into the trash can to make it fit that Bro comes out into the kitchen and you and John both freeze.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he asks, and John squints at you.

“He ate the yogurt,” John whisper-shouts, and you cross your arms.

“I didn’t know it was so far past its expiration date!” you say, and Bro pulls a face at you.

“If you get sick, don’t come crying to me,” he says, and you gasp.

“I feel _fine_ , thank you very much.”

Now, when Bro came in you and John froze. You’ve still got your foot in the goddamn trash can where you were trying to get all the shit to fit, and John is leaning over the sink holding a glass of water. You both look like idiots and you’re honestly a little afraid to move, since Bro is looking at you both _really_ disapprovingly, and it’s all probably one of the most stupid situations you’ve ever gotten yourself into.

Bro turns to John, and John squeaks a little bit. “What the hell are _you_ flipping out over?” he asks.

“The, uh, yogurt,” John responds.

“What? Did you eat it too?”

“No!” John yelps, and he straightens up and puts the glass down. “D-Dave was kissing me earlier and I feel like he might make me sick or something….” He’s blushing furiously and it almost makes you laugh, and Bro just shakes his head.

“In my defense my shades make it hard to read sometimes,” you say, and John glares at you.

“Then maybe you should take them off for two seconds to read the expiration date before you eat something! What if you’ve killed us both?”

“John.” You sigh. “Have you honestly ever heard of anybody dying from yogurt?”

“I think you both need to shut the fuck up,” Bro mutters, and you groan and finally stand properly, away from the trash can.

“Yeah, well, Dave’s on drugs,” John says, and Bro snaps around to face you.

You squeak. “I am _not_!”

John gasps. “No _wonder_ you didn’t bother to read the expiration date! I bet you were tripping like _shit_ when you were eating that yogurt!”

“John, what the fuck?” you squawk defensively. “I’m not on drugs!”

Bro looked like he was about to snap you in half, and then he looked confused, but now he just looks so unbelievably _done_ with you and John’s bullshit that he actually just sighs, tells you to go buy more groceries, and then disappears back into his room.

You sigh and glare at John, and he squeaks and hesitantly goes over to you. “Sorry,” he says, and you sigh again.

“Whatever,” you say. “I don’t think I’m gonna get you sick, okay?”

“Yeah, I guess not.”

“We need to go get food that’s actually good.”

John nods, but then gasps. “I was supposed to go to work!” he screams, and you raise your eyebrows.

So he _was_ supposed to go.

John stumbles back and forth for a moment, seeming conflicted about whether he should actually go or not. In the end he seemed to decide that he should, and he zipped off back to your room to get his stuff. He came back into the kitchen and grabbed your hand, tugging you along with him when he went out the door. You decide to go along with him since you need to go get food anyway. After a few minutes he declares you’re slowing him down, and lets go of you, running down the street like a madman. You laugh and follow after him until he gets to the store – you spot him through the window apologizing profusely to Rose.

A few minutes later, however, while John rushes around trying to straighten himself out, Rose comes out. She stops when she sees you, and it makes you nervous for some reason.

“You’re friends with John?” she asks slowly, eyeing you critically. You nod.

“Yeah. Sometimes I come around here while he’s working since he’s never got anything to do.”

“That’s nice.” Her eyes snap up to meet yours – or rather, your shades.

“It is.”

You both stare at each other for a few moments, and you can practically see the tension between you and her. It’s a little creepy, honestly.

But then she just smiles at you and walks away, and you’re left there feeling extremely awkward.

You shake your head and poke back into the store for a moment, letting John know that you’re gonna go get food. He nods and then continues his frantic rushing, and you shake your head at him and go back outside.

You momentarily, on your way to the grocery store, consider if you should get actual real food this time. Like, rather than microwaveable instant frozen shit, maybe you should get stuff to make actual food.

You’re almost certain neither you or your brother know how to make anything besides stuff like sandwiches, so you dismiss that thought for now.

_Someday_.

So, when you get to the store you buy a bunch more of that frozen instant microwave stuff. The not real food. You get, like, a whole ton of ramen and frozen pizza and those little macaroni things that you just put water in and throw in the microwave, and you get a bunch of fucking yogurt, too. God.

Basically, you get a huge variety of instant stuff, but no strictly “real” food.

Hey, at least it’s cheap.

So you get all that shit, and then since a lot of it is frozen stuff you take it back to your apartment and put it all away there. You think Bro went out someplace, since he’s not there, and you hope he doesn’t stay out forever and ever like he does.

Sigh.

You change into some better clothes and then head back to the store, and when you come inside John is lying on the floor under a small mountain of sheet music. You can’t help but laugh when you see him, and all he does is wave his arms around and wheeze something at you about overworking himself or… something.

You go over, sit next to him, and carefully pull the sheet music off of him, putting it in neat little stacks. He continues to lie there afterward, though, and you poke him about a thousand times before he even looks at you. Once he does, though, it only takes a little shove from you to get him to get up and on his feet again.

“How the fuck did you even manage that?” you ask him, standing next to him.

“Well,” he begins, looking extremely distant, “I was gonna try to sort through a bunch of them at once so I tried to take like half the shelf off at once and hold it in a huge stack but it was too heavy and it fell on me.” He pauses for a moment and stares at the wall. “I think I had a religious experience while I was lying there.”

He mentions something about mystical light and dramatic music after that, and then just stands there staring at the wall in complete silence.

“John.”

…

“John.”

…

“Joooohn.”

He slowly turns to you and you smack him upside the head, and he squeaks an “ouch” before rubbing his head and smiling at you. “I think I needed that,” he tells you. “Thanks.”

“Uh-huh,” you say. “That was weird even for you. And you’re pretty weird.”

John gasps. “I am not! At least I don’t live in an apartment full of weird butt puppets!”

“Butt puppets?” you say, and you can’t help but laugh. “Fucking butt puppets. John.”

“Isn’t that what they are?” he squeaks, and you just laugh some more.

“That’s what they are now,” you say. “I’m totally going to start calling them that.”

“Nooo, don’t call them that!” John yelps.

“I’ll do what I want, John,” you say, poking his cheek. “Butt puppets.”

“ _You’re_ a butt puppet,” John mutters, and you can’t help but laugh.

“Okay. That’s exactly how I’m going to insult people from now on too.”

John groans and sits on the floor again, resting his head back on the shelf. “You’re so straaaange, Dave.”

John lies there for a while, seeming very defeated over the whole butt puppet thing, and you wander around putting the music away while he sits there sulking. Every time you walk past him you kneel down and kiss him, then get back up and continue walking. After about ten minutes of that he finally grabs you, when you try to get up, and holds you there, kissing you back for a little bit. When he’s satisfied he lets you go and stands up with you, brushing himself off and idly stepping back over to the register.

You don’t really say much for the rest of his shift, and instead just sit on the floor next to him while he stands and does whatever on the counter. You fall asleep at some point and wake up to a much darker environment and John nudging you gently. He tells you he’s gonna go home and you tell him you’ll follow him (or something, you’re not so sure since you were still sleepy), so a couple minutes later you’re both heading back to his home. It’s cold and you’re leaning on him pretty heavily since you’re still so tired, and he keeps giggling and hugging you closer every time you drift off toward the other side of the sidewalk.

At some point you both get back to his house, and as soon as you do you zip over to his couch and flop down. The last thing you remember before you fall asleep is John latching on to you under a very fuzzy blanket – with Mr. Cat hopping up onto you both shortly afterward.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS REALLY SHORT BUT HEY IM DOING IT IM BEATING THIS WRITER'S BLOCK TO THE GROUND BIT BY BIT

Your name is John, and you’ve been sitting here with Dave all night. He fell asleep as soon as he got on the couch, it seems, and you snuggled up with him and Mr. Cat and watched him for a while until you got bored. Now you’re watching a movie – very quietly, because you don’t want to wake Dave up – while Mr. Cat rubs his face on your blanket. It’s kind of difficult to contain yourself because you _really really love_ this movie, so you’re quietly muttering comments to Mr. Cat while you watch. You’re actually getting hungry, so you pause the movie and look at Dave, carefully starting to get up from the couch. He doesn’t stir, so you get up and go off into the kitchen, grabbing yourself some Pringles. They’re the pizza kind, and you _really really love_ these things just as much as you love the movie.

You eat a couple of them and wander back to the couch, sitting back down and cuddling up to Dave again. He shifts around a little and slides his arms around your waist, and you giggle. You tap him on the head gently with the cylinder of Pringles and he shifts around a little more, putting you in a more comfortable position. You smile and kiss the top of his head, and then turn back to the TV and play your movie. You sit there munching on Pringles and whispering comments to Mr. Cat while it plays, and once it’s over you’re not sure what to do. You want to put in another movie, but Dave is still hugging you to him and you think he’ll probably wake up if you pry him off. So instead you just turn to live TV and flip through the channels until you find some other movie. You haven’t seen this one (you’re not even sure what it is), but it doesn’t look too interesting so you just turn to focus on Dave again. You’re getting a bit cold, actually, so you pull the blanket around you and him a bit more and burrow down into it some, pressing up against Dave and kissing his nose. You feel like a little kid, really, and it’s nice.

Dave fell asleep so immediately that he didn’t even take his shades off, so after they’ve poked you in the face enough times you finally huff and gently take them off of him, placing them on the couch next to you. He looks really content, and it makes you happy.

You finish off the few Pringles that are left and then toss the cylinder over by Dave’s shades. Mr. Cat dives after it for a moment but loses interest, coming back and curling up between you and Dave. It’s like you’re all a little family or something, snuggled up on the couch, with that dumb movie going on the TV. You feel like you could lie here forever with Dave, just watching the night slowly fade away and the sun come up, day after day. (We all know that’s not practical, though.) Really, you think you’ve found a new favorite thing to do.

You finally take your glasses off once you start to feel sleepy and set them down over next to Dave’s shades. You yawn and cuddle closer to him, and he hugs you a bit tighter. You smooch him gently and rest your head on his shoulder, closing your eyes. You’re so warm and comfortable, and the movie on the TV makes for nice background noise. You hear Mr. Cat purring quietly between you and Dave, and you’re just so, so comfortable that it’s barely even two minutes before you fall asleep in Dave’s arms.

-

You’re still John, and you’re waking up to somebody shaking you gently. At first you think it’s Dave, so you just shift closer to him and rub his back a bit. However, you hear your dad’s voice, so you turn and look at him and you swear you almost scream.

It’s early morning, you think, since it’s still kind of dark – not so dark that it’s nighttime, though. Your dad is probably gonna go off to work, and he must have seen you and Dave up on the couch like this on his way out.

You’re not sure what to think. Will your dad just assume you were both cold or something, or that you were watching TV and you just fell asleep next to each other? You hope that for a moment, but the way Dave is holding you and the way you’re snuggled up to him pretty much dismisses both of those ideas. If he asks, you think you’re going to risk it and go with the “we were really cold” schtick.

To your great relief, your dad just suggests that you and Dave move to an actual bed, and then he tells you that he might have to work a little later than usual, and that there should be enough food for both you and Dave if he’s still here later.

It really feels like it was unnecessary for him to wake you up to tell you that, and you’re wondering if he just wanted an excuse to come over and check on you.

You don’t know. You’re too tired to think.

You say goodbye to your dad and he leaves a couple minutes later. You glance back over at Dave, who is still asleep, and consider following your dad’s suggestion and sleeping in your bed. You’re already feeling a bit sore from sleeping in a weird position on the couch, and it would probably be warmer under the blankets on your bed, so you figure you’ll move.

You poke Dave a couple times and shake him gently. He wakes up a couple moments later and stretches, smiling at you.

“Come on, I wanna move to my bed,” you whisper to him, and he nods and gets up carefully. You get up too, grabbing your blanket, and you head back to your room while Dave follows you groggily. A couple minutes later you’re wrestling one of your fuzzier blankets out of your closet, and Dave is sitting on your bed laughing at you.

Once you yank the blanket out and go back over to Dave, you and him get under all your covers and snuggle up exactly like you were before. Mr. Cat comes skittering in and hops up onto your bed, curling up above you and Dave’s heads on the pillow. 

“Mm. Your bed is really warm.” Dave yawns and hugs you closer to him, kissing your neck a couple times. You giggle and kiss the top of his head, rubbing his back a bit. “You’re really warm too,” he says, settling down and resting his head on your shoulder. You and him stay like that for a while – you’re both still sleepy, but you just don’t want to actually sleep yet. Dave whispers to you about all sorts of stuff – his music, stupid stuff he’s done with Bro, etc., etc. You’re listening, but you find yourself drifting off and his words becoming muffled little background noises.

You finally fall asleep to Dave whispering everything he loves about you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in other news i changed my tumblr url again ah  
> now i'm cronusdamnpora  
> uwu  
> okay well anyway hopefully i can get back into the swing of this before long!! hope you guys are doing well  
> later!!


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ugh. this chapter is by no means perfect. i was sick for almost four weeks (still kind of so) and the last two weeks have been really hard for me.
> 
> i'm exhausted.
> 
> there's some stuff i really should fix in this one like tense and such but i don't really want to... i haven't updated in a while and that's kind of all i want to do right now. gonna try to end the fic soon i think.
> 
> i wanna write another long one like this one but plan it out better... about 97% of this fic is just stuff i pulled together while i had nothing to do in class so it's not very... good, in my opinion. just kind of a thing i would do in my free time.
> 
> i started working on one of those requests from a little while back and i made some good progress on it so hopefully i'll be able to post that before too long. god i'm just so tired.
> 
> i kind of want to write a meowrails fic but i've never written them before....
> 
> sorry for rambling so much by the way. i'll shut up in a minute.
> 
> if anybody has more requests (honestly i think i'd be better at writing requests right now; i'm sort of lacking in ideas of my own) please please please tell them to me, and i'll do my best to write them.
> 
> as i've said like a hundred billion times my tumblr is cronusdamnpora and i'm on there like 90% of the time, so if you wanna talk or become my friend or yell at me to update or give me ideas or request something or whatever just come and talk to me.
> 
> i have a headache.
> 
> anyway thanks for keeping up with this (admittedly very shitty) fic for so long, i'll try to finish it soon.

You are John, and it’s been a few months since that night Dave came over – the one where you fell asleep to him talking. It’s been very, very uneventful – the music store has barely managed to scrape along, and you thought for a little bit that maybe, just _maybe_ it wouldn’t go out of business, but… here you are: your last day of working there.

You still haven’t told your dad about you and Dave. You’re not sure how you’re going to, honestly, and you don’t know if you ever will at this point. You keep telling yourself you will _someday_ , but every time you’re even the least bit determined to tell him, you wind up putting it off even more.

All that aside, though, you’re dedicating your focus today to a) your last day at work and b) finding a new job.

You’re going to miss the store, you think – even though you were bored pretty much all the time and didn’t get many customers, it was a nice little store and it’s not like the work was incredibly stressful. It was so small that you didn’t have a manager or anybody barking at you all the time; you just got to be by yourself in there. It was nice and quiet.

You’re not sure what kind of job you want to get now. The store was nice – you like music (who doesn’t) and if you bothered to get one down you could mess around on the keyboards on slower days. You kind of want to get another job at a little place, like a coffee place or the Subway that Dave gets his disgusting subs from.

Well, you suppose you don’t have to decide right away. (Soon, though.)

You step in to the store. It’s a bright, sunny afternoon, and you turn the lights off – you’ve always liked working in natural light. The store doesn’t look like it’s changed one bit, and there’s still music and instruments all over. You’re about 1200% sure that nobody will ever come and buy everything here, so you’re wondering where all this stuff is going to go. It’s kind of depressing to think that it might just get tossed or abandoned somewhere, especially if _nobody anywhere_ ever wants to buy it. Honestly, if you could afford it, you’d buy yourself one of the keyboards, but… yeah.

You heave a sigh and take your familiar little place behind the register, and as you glance around the store a lot of things start going through your head. The day Dave first came in, and how he looked honestly a bit terrified at how you treated him; those few times Dave came and got those notebooks from you, that he wrote in or whatever; that time he came in and helped you out with the stuff in the spare room, and the day you kissed him; that day you got stuck under the sheet music and he helped you out….

Yeah, you and Dave have done a _lot_ of stuff here. It makes you realize that both your lives are really, _really_ boring.

In the first hour that you stand there, nobody comes in, and you don’t get too absorbed in anything. You’re kind of trying not to – you’re really going to miss this place and you sort of want the day to pass as slowly as possible. In the next hour a few people come in and buy some cheap instruments, and when they leave you can’t help but heave a gigantic sigh.

You wish Dave was here.

The hours pass very slowly, and you actually fall asleep a few times. In the last stretch of your shift you give in to the boredom and get down one of those keyboards, setting it up and playing it for the last time.

You play all the slow songs you know, the volume down lower than you usually set it.

The store is closing early today, so unfortunately you have the _wonderful_ responsibility of locking it up for the last time when you go home. When that time comes you let out probably the hundred thousandth sigh of the day, put that keyboard back up, and sweep your eyes over the store a last time.

You step outside and lock the doors, and you take a very slow walk home in the afternoon sun.

-

You’d almost forgotten about Dave when you got to your house. Recently he’d had some horrible falling-out with Bro (he wouldn’t give you the fine details), and seemed to declare for himself that he’d be hiding out at your house for a while. You kind of didn’t have a choice in the matter; you came home one day, gone inside, and found Dave hanging out in the living room playing a game on your old N64. You tried to kick him out but he refused, and so now he’s apparently living at your house until he can step back into his apartment without getting the shit beaten out of him.

It’s a really weird situation.

Anyway, you’d almost forgotten about him until you saw him lying on his back in your yard. You stood there at the door for a minute, your arm raised up to unlock the door. You rolled your eyes and turned a bit, throwing your keys at Dave, and when they hit him he sprang up and flailed at nothing until he spotted you standing there.

“Shit,” he said, relaxing. “I thought you were Bro or something. Come to assassinate me.”

“I threw a key at you.”

“Keys can be murder weapons.”

You shook your head and held your hand out. “I need to unlock the door.”

“Then you shouldn’t have thrown your fucking keys at me, should you?”

You squinted at Dave, and he stuck his tongue out at you. You hate to admit it, but he’s become _really_ infuriating these days. Maybe you’re just stressed about losing your job, but his sarcasm and “irony” and just general _bullshit_ has started to seriously get on your nerves.

“Dave,” you say. “Just give me the keys.”

He blinks at you a few times (he’s actually started wearing his shades less nowadays, which you find interesting) and nods, tossing your keys to you. You catch them and unlock the door, swinging it open quickly and then slamming it behind you once you go inside. You’re just so _annoyed_ now, your sad, nostalgic feelings about the store essentially gone. All you want is to bury yourself in some blankets and sleep for about fifteen years, but of course that’s not realistic.

You hurry down the hallway, _really_ hoping that Dave won’t follow you. Your dad stops you and tries to ask you something on the way, but you just shove past him and shut yourself in the nice confines of your room. You sigh a few times and bury yourself in the blankets on your bed, trying to sleep.

Maybe you’ll be in a better mood tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was kind of terrible and also pretty short but i'm not feeling too well today and i just... ugh i just wanted to finish it and post it. really there's just been some shitty stuff going on with my friend the past couple weeks and it's really stressing me out and i'm just ahghagslkfjlsadjfk. i need sleep.
> 
> thanks guys.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gosh gosh gosh okay i have a beta now but i just wanted to post this as soon as i wrote it since i've been so slow to update lately!! i might make some little revisions later if she wants me to. uwu
> 
> (forgive me if i totally got the rules for go fish wrong omg i havent played it in ages)

“Nope. Go fish.”

“Shit.”

You are John. It’s been a few days since your last day of work, and you’d give _anything_ to have something cool to do. You decided to give yourself a little break and wait a week or so before you actively started trying to get a new job, but now you’re starting to regret it. This is literally all you’ve been doing for the past couple days: playing Go Fish with Dave.

(At least you’re less irritated than you were the other day. (You got lots of sleep and you think that probably helped.))

You are, quite solidly, kicking Dave’s ass. You’ve never met anyone more terrible than him at the game, and out of pity you’ve started suggesting different games to play. He keeps turning them down, saying he won’t give up until he’s finally beaten you once.

You are _so_ close to just _begging_ him to switch games. So close.

You ask Dave for a card, and it takes him about five minutes of shuffling through his rather impressive inventory of cards to finally give you one. You’ve got about six cards left, and in the next couple rounds of the game Dave only gets one of them.

You’d ask him why he doesn’t get rid of some of the ridiculous amounts of cards he’s got, but you figure you’re just not going to go there.

The next time he has to go fish you just put your cards down, reach over, and grab Dave.

“For the love of God. Dave. You are _never_ going to win this game.”

Dave pouts. “You have no faith in me at all, do you?”

“No,” you say. “No, I really, _really_ don’t. I’m about to _die_ of boredom, here, Dave, so have a little mercy on me.”

Dave squints at you, and tosses his cards down. “I know what you need.”

“What?” you ask, letting go of him and shooting him a confused look.

“Comfort sex.”

“ _What_?!” You blush, and frown at him. “No, Dave. No.”

“Come on,” he says. “I think it would really help you. Also it wouldn’t be boring.”

You squint. “Dave, you _are_ a virgin, right?”

He blushes. “Yes? Of _course_ I am?”

You sigh. “Okay, good. But the answer’s still no.”

“Ever?”

“Maybe someday.” You sigh and lean back away from him a ways. “But not anytime soon. Not in this house, either. If my dad found out he would probably actually kill me.”

“Okay.” Dave smiles at you, and you’re glad he’s not being a dick about this kind of thing. You are really, _really_ glad, though, that he hasn’t gotten too touchy-feely with you in front of your dad. You’re not sure if he knows that you haven’t told your dad, and it was already hard enough to get your dad to let Dave stay while he was having his Bro issues. One time though you were both getting some food from the kitchen, and Dave made some joke about how great a boyfriend he was. You didn’t realize your dad had been in the next room, and when you both left the kitchen you almost had a heart attack when you saw him sitting there.

You _really_ need to go and get another job before you either die from boredom or get murdered by your dad.

You sigh. “Yeah… so what _else_ do you think could possibly help?”

Dave shrugs. “Dunno. I’ve kind of had my mind set on comfort sex all this time.”

“Why?!”

He smiles at you. “You probably don’t realize it, John, but I find you _very_ attractive.”

“Y-yeah, well,” you begin nervously, “you’re pretty hot too. Or whatever.”

“Thanks.”

“Mmhm….”

If you said you hadn’t thought about sex with Dave before, you’d be lying. You have most certainly thought about it, but the idea kiiiiiind of scared you a little. You’ve had pretty much zero experience with anything sex-related, and Dave seemed like the kind of guy that just _knew_ how to do things without necessarily having actual experience. If that makes sense. Essentially you figured that if you had sex with Dave, you’d be _way_ more awkward than he would be, and you get embarrassed just thinking about it. You suppose you _want_ to, but you’re just… really, really nervous about it. And then of course there’s the dad thing. You can never tell for sure if he’s home or not, and he’d probably lose his shit if he even caught you and Dave making out. You don’t want to image what he’d do if he walked in to your room and you both were having sex.

“Are you okay?” Dave asks you. “You’ve seemed kinda off lately.”

“Yeah….” You sigh. “I think I’m just stressed about my job and stuff.”

“Sorry to hear that.” He looks apologetic. “I’m probably not helping by being an asshole all the time.”

“No, it’s fine.” You smile at him. “I don’t think you can help it.”

“I don’t if that was an insult or not.”

You shrug. “Neither do I. I think I’m gonna go to sleep.”

“I wanna go with you.”

“Okay.”

You put all the cards in a haphazard little stack and shuffle on back to your room. Dave follows quietly behind you, and a few minutes later would have you burying yourself under a nice pile of blankets with Dave cuddled close to you. He’s kissing your cheeks gently and rubbing your back very slowly, trying to help you to sleep, it seems. You sigh about a hundred thousand times and plant a few kisses on Dave’s lips, and he presses a couple to your forehead in return. You yawn, and then he yawns, and you both simultaneously push a bit closer to each other. Dave starts kissing your neck after a few minutes and you shudder, your mind wanting to push him away but your body pulling him closer. He slowly makes his way down and bites down on your shoulder, making you squeak.

“Dave, I said no…” you mutter, and he smiles against you. You push him away, just a few inches, and look right at him. Your eyes feel kind of heavy – you’re _sleepy_ , you really are, and he seems to notice.

“Okay. Sorry.” He smiles at you again and kisses your nose, hugging you close to him again and rubbing your back more. You’re slipping off into sleep, and you idly push toward him and press a few kisses to his lips.

You fall asleep before you can even pull away from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> goodness gracious oh my gosh two people came to me last night and messaged me on my tumblr, and turns out they both know me from my writing which absolutely amazed me!! they were all oh yeah i read your fic ridiculous and i was like OH GOSH BLESS YOUR SOUL WOW IM AMAZED I JJUST WOWOW JWIAJSLKJFD and yeah i kind of made a fool out of myself.
> 
> but wow yeah that was just REALLY COOL!! you guys are cool!!! super cool!! so cool!
> 
> as i said last time i think i'm going to try to finish this fic soon. i have another short one i started a little over a week ago that my beta is gonna help me with, and i have most of one of the requests written!! so there might be two fics in the near future if i can get my butt back in gear and get writing.
> 
> heh one of the people i met last night was tumblr user cronuslampora which is SUPER RAD LIKE WOW WE ARE URL BUDDIES
> 
> gosh dang you guys are really great. super great. super awesome. cool
> 
> i have to go to my next class soon so i think that's all i can say for now!! later guys!!
> 
> EDIT: by the way i got pesterchum again - i used to have it but then when my hard drive died i lost it and i never downloaded it again. but i just got it again last night and my handle is silenceCultivator if you have pesterchum and you wanna hit me up!! uwu
> 
> i also have skype if anybody wants to talk to me on there - just ask!
> 
> thanks.


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hey!! i have about half of the next chapter written i think??? gosh  
> i think im getting back into the swing of things here uwu  
> oh also in case you missed my little edit last chapter ive got pesterchum and my handle is silenceCultivator if you wanna hit me up on there! ouo  
> also if you wanna hear my stupid singing voice just let me know because recently ive been actually singing for people haha.  
> thanks!!

Your name is Bro Strider, and you’re at a thrift store getting rid of a _lot_ of old shit. You and Dave have kind of never ever gotten rid of old clothes or any sort, so today you’re finally getting the colossal pile of clothes that Dave doesn’t fit into anymore out of the way. Once you get that done you decide to go look for some cheap kitchen shit – your silverware is getting to be in pretty terrible condition. It also seems to keep vanishing, probably during some freaky strifes of you and Dave’s.

(Now, this is a few weeks before John’s last day at work.)

You are in a pretty good mood today – finally getting rid of all those old clothes really freed up a lot of space in the closet where you’d been keeping them, so now you can finally start putting stuff in there again. This all goes to shit, though, when you spot them. What looks like every single one of your puppets, all in a pile in the store.

As if this doesn’t make you mad enough already, you are absolutely _infuriated_ when you spot Cal sitting at the top of the pile.

No one other than Dave could have done this (who else even dares to go into the apartment?), and so you’re very quickly planning exactly how you’re going to murder him.

Once you calm yourself down enough, you go up to the counter and ask the lady back there if it’s possible to take the puppets back. She looks at you funny and you’re pretty sure to get them back you’d have to pay for every last one of them, and of course Cal is obnoxiously expensive.

Dave is as good as dead already. (Even more so when you realize he didn’t even make a single cent of profit off the puppets.)

You storm back to the apartment and hurry inside, scanning around for Dave. You don’t see him anywhere, and you poke your head into his room and look around in there too. Of course, he’s gone. He probably knew you were going to kill him and took off, but you just _know_ he’ll be back.

He forgot his shades on the desk.

You go back into the living room and stand right next to the door, up against the wall. As soon as he comes inside you’re going to grab him and beat the absolute living _shit_ out of him, and then you’re going to make him go and buy back every single puppet out of his own pocket.

You don’t have to wait long, and soon the door is swinging open and you’re just about to grab him as he comes inside.

You almost explode when you see it’s not Dave at all, but John instead.

“Oh, hi, Bro!” he says, and he’s so cheerful you almost punch him anyway. “Dave came over but he forgot his shades, so he sent me to come and get them for him!” He smiles that stupid, _fucking_ smile of his, and just walks on back to Dave’s room like he owns the place. You don’t budge, and instead just stare at him as he goes. Honestly, if you moved, it’d probably be to punch the shit out of something. That something most likely being John.

He comes back fairly quickly, holding the shades delicately. You’re still staring at him, but you’re not sure he’s even noticed because of your own shades. All he does is pause at the door and grin at you. “Well, ‘bye!” he squeaks, and he waves before stepping back outside and shutting the door behind him.

It takes you several minutes to finally move away from the door, and when you do you’re not even slightly motivated to fuck anything up anymore.

If Dave steps into this apartment though, you reeeeeeally think you might kill him.

-

Now, you are, quite effectively, Mr. Cat.

You’re having a very interesting week. John hasn’t been leaving anymore, and you’re not sure why, but you’re _certainly_ not complaining. That Dave guy has been over here as well, and sometimes when he and John are sleeping together you can manage to get up into the bed with them. It’s even easier when they fall asleep on the couch because there’s more room!

Today is one of those really lazy days where Dave and John are still sleeping even when it’s late afternoon. They’re doing that thing you really love – they’re both kind of latched on to each other, and you like when they do that because you can drape yourself over both of them at the same time. They’re both exceedingly comfortable – even more so when the sun is shining through the window and you can lie in it _and_ on top of them.

You’re kind of hungry, though, so you’re wondering when John is going to wake up. He’s always the one who feeds you, and lately he’s been feeding you a bit more than usual. You’re quite torn – you’re comfortable lying here, but you’re also getting fairly _un_ comfortable because of your hunger. You can’t decide whether to wake them up or not!

After a few minutes your hunger starts to get so unbearable that you settle for waking them up. You stretch, then stand, effectively losing your balance and falling over onto the bed.

Nice going, Mr. Cat.

After you pick yourself up you settle for incessantly walking around on top of John until he wakes up. It takes a couple minutes, but you do manage to wake him up when you tickle his nose with your tail. It makes him giggle, and he sits up a bit to push you off gently.

Dave is still asleep, and John glances over at him for a few seconds until he looks back at you. “Do you want something, Mr. Cat?” he asks you quietly. You meow at him in response, and then hop off the bed, hoping he’ll follow you. Fortunately he does, and when you lead him into the kitchen where your bowls are he catches on that you’re hungry. He catches on that you’re _really_ hungry when he realizes what time it is.

“Oh, sorry I didn’t feed you earlier!” he squeaks. “I’ve been sleeping a lot lately.” He grins that goofy grin of his at you and hurries about getting your food, and five minutes later you’re a very happy kitty eating like there’s no tomorrow. He sits on the floor next to you and pets you idly for a few minutes, but you’re kind of ignoring him because _food_.

By the time you’re done eating he’s gone – back to Dave, you think. You yawn a few times and pad off into the living room, hopping up and curling up on the couch. It’s nice for a little while, but you’re not all that sleepy and you’re really, _really_ bored, so you go back to John and Dave instead. When you get into the room they’re tangled up with each other again, and when you get up onto the bed you see that they’re actually kissing. It makes you feel kind of awkward, even though you’ve seen them do it a billion times now. You flop across them like usual though, and it makes John giggle.

Pretty soon you fall asleep.

You really like these lazy days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coming up in the next chapter  
> the sex  
> bye guys!


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, okay, I'll tell you up front that the sex was very much implied. I don't think this is the kind of fic where there'd be super graphic detailed sex, so if I ever do write that out in actual detail it'll be a side thing. If anyone even wants that.
> 
> Sorry for taking so long to update - I was editing a request and I started writing yet another little fic... it's another one where they're like, eight, and Dave has this crush on John and John is this tiny little boy who he finds really adorable but he's never actually spoken to him before so he's trying to work up the nerve to do so and I just aksjdflskj it's fun to write. I love writing when people have crushes on each other, gosh.
> 
> I've been exhausted lately, and I'm kind of rushing this update because I have to leave in a moment so... I might edit the notes in a little while, so check back on this.
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> EDIT: (at the end of the chapter)

You are Dave.

You just woke up a few minutes ago when John came back. It was kind of funny – he lied back down next to you and you smiled at him, and suddenly he was kissing you.

Not that you’re complaining, of course.

He’s a bit awkward right now – his hands are just barely brushing down your back, and so you let your hands wander as well, hoping he might follow your lead. Before you know it you’re tugging at the hem of his shirt, but his hands have moved back up and he’s rubbing your shoulders. It certainly makes you relax, though, so you lose your focus on what _you’re_ doing, and before you know it _John’s_ the one trying to pull your shirt up. You’re doing the complete opposite of stopping him, and instead you just let your hands ghost all over him. He slides his own hands up under your shirt and does the same, and you find yourself wanting this more and more and _more_ until you grab on to something furry.

You pull away from John for a moment to look and see that it’s a sleeping Mr. Cat you grabbed hold of. You only get a few seconds to see, though, because then John’s yanking you back, kissing you harder than he was before. You let out a squeak; he starts kissing your neck, and you realize that you’re drowning in his touch all over again. You’re in so deep that you’ve barely realized the roles have pretty much reversed, and then he bites down on you. Hard.

You yelp loudly, and John snaps right up. He sits up and shushes you, pressing his finger to your lips. “Shhh,” he says. “Don’t want anyone to hear, now do we?”

The way he says that sends a shudder through you. It’s a completely foreign tone to you, one you never even imagined John of all people to use. It’s very different, and you _love_ it.

John looks at you for a moment and then smirks, taking his finger off your mouth and going back down on you. He presses kisses all along your neck, down to your shoulder. You feel his teeth again when he bites you, bites your _neck_ , and it hurts but you _love_ it and… it’s getting to be way too much. It’s become apparent to you that John’s turning out to be way better at this than you, and you makes you just a _liiiittle_ self-conscious.

He seems to notice that something’s bothering you, so John takes a moment to pull off and shoot one of those goofy grins of his at you. It reassures you, at least a little, so you take the opportunity to pull him back to you and kiss him gently. He lets out a giggle and returns it, a bit less dominating than he was before. His hands wander, your hands wander….

And then you’re dissolving again.

-

You are still Dave, and you keep drifting off to sleep. You’re trying to stay awake, but John just wore you absolutely ragged, and it’s proving to be very difficult. He himself can’t seem to stop giggling.

“Where the hell did you throw my shirt…?” you ask sleepily. “It’s cold.”

“Uhhh…” John glances around, and then explodes into giggling again. “I don’t know…!”

You roll your eyes. “Then warm me up, asshole.”

John giggles even more and scoots close to you, wrapping his arms around you. You grumble something about how ridiculous it is that he won’t stop giggling, and he just continues to laugh. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s just… I topped the shit out of you!!”

You groan and cover up your face. “I swear if you go around telling everyone we know about that I’m going to throw you out the window.”

“What about your bro?” John asks. “He’d probably give you one of those stupid ‘congrats on the sex’ cakes.”

“Isn’t your dad Mr. Cake Man or whatever though?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess he is!” John squeaks. “Oh God, I wonder if he’s ever made a ‘congrats on the sex’ cake!”

“I bet he’s got an entire secret business dedicated to those cakes.”

John looks horrified. “Can we not talk about sex cakes ever again?”

“John,” you say, looking at him seriously. “First ‘butt puppets’, and now ‘sex cakes’?”

“Shut your mouth!” he squeaks, and he slaps you weakly. “It’s not like you can make an actual cake out of _sex_.”

“Thanks for the really awkward mental image,” you say. “Good job there.”

“I’ll kick you into next week,” he says. “And you’ll stuck in a horrible alternate universe full of nothing but butt puppets and you’ll probably cry or something.”

You stare at him. “That’s the strangest threat I’ve ever heard.”

John giggles. “Really?”

You nod, and John just sits there all happy with himself.

For a few minutes you shift around and try to get closer to him, because you’re still cold. Once you manage to get comfortable you’re right in John’s face, and he just shoots you that dorky grin.

“You are absolutely ridiculous, you know that?” you say. “I swear, that’s what I thought when I first saw you.”

“That’s what I thought too,” John tells you. “Because of your shades I think. You were ‘ridiculous shades guy’ in my head, pretty much.”

“Yeah, well, you scared the shit out of me when you got all close and personal that time I went into the store.”

John pouts. “I was just trying to be _nice_.”

You roll your eyes. “Face it. You’re ridiculous, all around.”

“And you’re a dork.”

You squeak. “I thought I was _your_ dork!”

“It was implied!”

“Since when is that the kind of thing you _imply_?”

“I don’t know!” John huffs and smacks your head. “You’re an idiot.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Whatever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit!!
> 
> ok im typing this at lunch with one hand gdi
> 
> okay so wow omg three people so far have come and tracked me down two people messaged me on tumblr and another person found me on pesterchum wow gosh 
> 
> and all of you are really realyl nice i cant even handle it its like you say "oh i read your fic ridiculous!!" and i start inwardly dying all like OH GOD BLESS U THAT FIC IS TERRIBLE IM SO SORRY I CANT HANDLE THIS
> 
> ehh.
> 
> okay so school has been murdering me lately, i have two papers i need to write and two different posters to make, and im so tired that yesterday i fell asleep right after i got home and i didnt even wake up until like 9:30 at night
> 
> gdi
> 
> yeah so updates might be a little slow until i get all this crap out of the way...
> 
> i'll try to finish the like two or three little fics i've started and get those posted.
> 
> yeah.
> 
> anyway i might not update much but you can totally come find me on my blog or pesterchum if you want to. uwu
> 
> bye!


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's kind of short, and I kind of apologize in advance for it?
> 
> Yeah.

Hey, hi, hello. How are you? I’m the author (you can call me Laura). This chapter’s gonna be in third-person. Let’s see if I can pull this off, shall we?

Poor, poor Mr. Cat (who had been so inconsiderately grabbed earlier) had gotten dumped off the bed when John topped the living shit out of Dave. This, of course, caused him to wake up, and when he did and he realized what they were doing, he was pretty freaked out.

So, our poor friend Mr. Cat had some trouble falling back asleep. He’s not too happy with John right now, honestly.

Now, John and Dave continued waffling around like idiots for a little while (“God, was ‘ridiculous’ the _only_ adjective you used for me in your head?” “No. Jesus Christ, John, my vocabulary is more varied than that.” “Well, it certainly seems to be your favorite! Didn’t you think anything else, like, oh, I don’t know, ‘wow, that guy looks pretty hot’?” “No, John. No.” “I’m going to punch you.”) until John stuck his tongue out at Dave and Dave decided to lick it. Yeah. Gross much?

John had gotten pretty disgusted (to which Dave responded with “come on, it’s not like we’ve never done that”) and so he angrily stomped off to go get some yogurt or something when he realized he didn’t have clothes on.

So, he was currently looking around for those. (Some pants, at least.)

“Dave, my clothes aren’t in the bed anywhere, are they?” he asks.

“Why do you so desperately need those specific clothes?” Dave responds. “It’s not like you don’t have other ones.”

“Because I like them, jeez,” John mutters. “You know what, I’m going to wear the skirt. Just to bother you.”

“’The skirt’?” Dave eyes John pretty strangely. “Why the fuck do you have a skirt? It’s not like you have a sister or anything.”

When he doesn’t get a response, Dave stares at John pretty incredulously. “ _Do_ you have a sister? Has my knowledge of you been a lie this entire time?”

“Ex-girlfriend,” John says quietly, and Dave snorts.

“You kept her fucking skirt?” Dave shakes his head. “That’s kind of weird and not weird at the same time. Was it that Rose girl?”

John squeaks. “No! God, Dave, I barely know Rose!” John takes a deep breath and digs around a bit more for something to wear that he deems acceptable, and after a couple minutes he’s finally got on some old gym shorts and a really, _really_ baggy T-shirt.

Dave looks John over. “I thought you were going to wear the skirt.”

“No, you’ve got me all embarrassed now.”

Dave smirks. “Well, shit. Only reason I didn’t hand you these,” he says, pulling out from under the blanket John’s shorts from earlier and holding them up, “was because I thought I was going to get to see your fine ass in a skirt.”

“You know what?” John huffs. “You know _what_ , Dave? _You_ can wear the skirt. Congratulations.” John leans over and picks up a fairly long and _ribbony_ skirt, tossing it at Dave. Dave looks it over and nods.

“This is nice.”

About five minutes later would have John trying not to laugh as Dave looks himself over in the mirror. He’s wearing the skirt and one of John’s shirts, and nodding pretty happily.

“Look at my fucking hips, John. My hips look really great in this shit.”

“Dave,” John says, “if I actually had a sister and that was her skirt, I would never ever _ever_ let you go near her. Ever.”

“Whatever, man, I’m really hot in this,” Dave says, twirling around a bit. “You have a hot boyfriend.”

“So do you.”

“Heh. Yeah, I do.”

Dave continues admiring himself for a couple minutes, and Mr. Cat wanders on over to him and John.

“Mr. Cat!” John squeaks, then blushes. “Ohhh. You probably saw all that earlier….”

All Mr. Cat does is meow, and then go over to the door, pushing on it gently. John (still blushing, what a dork) goes over and opens the door for him, and Mr. Cat scurries off down the hall and curls up on the couch. John shuts the door and turns back to Dave.

“If Mr. Cat could talk, do you think he’d go and tell everyone about that?”

“About what?” Dave asks absentmindedly. “The sex?”

“Y-yeah. The sex.”

“Mm, don’t know,” Dave says, turning to John and prodding at his cheek. “What if he _can_ talk?”

“Oh, no!” John squawks. “If he tells Dad then I’m good as dead!”

“Whoa.” Dave blinks and steps close to John, patting his back awkwardly. “I really don’t think he can talk.”

John sighs and clings tightly to Dave, hugging him close. “Yeah… but I still, I just. I don’t know how to tell him about you.”

“Bro was obnoxiously smooth about it,” Dave says. “Like, he kind of knew already, and he kind of forced it out of me, and then he just called me stupid and shut up about it.”

John blinks. “If my dad was an asshole then it might would go like that.”

“You should leave it to me,” Dave says, kissing John’s forehead. “I could probably think up this absolutely sick way to tell him. Like, do this dance number and all.”

John giggles and smiles at Dave, very slightly. “If it’s not too stupid, then I guess you could try….”

“Cool. I’ll get riiiiiight on that.”

Both of them smile at each other like the dorks they are for a couple seconds, and John kisses Dave’s cheek. “You know I love you, right?”

“Yeah.” Dave smiles and hugs John tightly. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, uh, this was sort of an experiment I suppose. It was kind of like rping with myself tbh. Again I was a total butt and I didn't run it by my beta first, but, uh... yeah. I need to start actually doing that. (It's just that I keep trying to update while I'm at school and I don't want to wait until I get home and I just aksjdflkajsdlfj)
> 
> There was something really awesome I was going to talk about earlier but I forgot what it was now. Shit.
> 
> Uhhm, if anybody's going to animazement on like the 25th or whenever (it's in about... two weeks??? a little less maybe? I can't remember) I'll be there on the saturday with a friend of mine and we're gonna johndave all over the place (naturally)
> 
> My other friend keeps telling me that I need to cosplay jade with her though so I might be john and also jade. pull the old switcheroo at some point.
> 
> shrug.
> 
> If I think of anything else I need to say I guess I'll come and edit this? otherwise it'll be in the next update!
> 
> Oh and those little fics I keep mentioning... I've been making gradual progress on all of them at the same time so hopefully I'll be able to post them all together before too long. I need to do those requests from a little while back too.
> 
> As I keep saying you can always find me on my blog or on pesterchum or on skype if you have my skype so if you wanna come talk about ships or tell me to update or request something or roleplay with me (whispers davekat at u) or ask me about this fic or become my friend or whatever i'll totally talk to you. friends are gr8.
> 
> Fun fact I actually used to hand-write this fic? The sex chapter I actually wrote by hand in class one day jfc
> 
> But yeah I wrote like the first twelve chapters or so by hand at school in the margins of my notes and stuff and then I'd go home and type them up. uwu
> 
> my handwriting is all flowy and spidery. heheh.
> 
> I also finished the project that's due this week (today actually) so I'm not being totally pressed for time on projects and papers anymore. Yay. I'll try to actually dedicate some good time into writing on this and some other stuff over the weekend.
> 
> Okay, so I should probably shut up since I've talked enough (and i still haven't remembered what i actually wanted to say) so uh... see you next update? unless you track me down beforehand of course
> 
> Later guys! (thanks for keeping up with this terrible thing bless all of u)
> 
> EDIT: CRAP I FORGOT TO ASK IF YOU GUYS EVEN LIKED THE THIRD-PERSON TBH I DONT CARE EITHER WAY BUT IF YOU HATED IT AND YOU NEVER WANT ME TO WRITE IN THIRD-PERSON EVER AGAIN PLEASE TELL ME CAUSE I DONT WANNA MAKE THIS FIC SUCK EVEN MORE BY WRITING IN A STUPID TENSE K
> 
> OK NOW IM GONE
> 
> ANOTHER EDIT: I MADE A SOLLUX FRIEND YESTERDAY AND HE TOLD ME THAT I KIND OF SEEMED LIKE DAVE AND I JUST LIKE DIED BECAUSE DAVE IS MY FAVORITE CHATRACTER AND I JST I ACTUALLY CRIED WHEN I HUGGED A DAVE COSPLAYER ONCE LIKE WOW BEING LIKE DAVE MADE ME DIE INWARDLY THANKS SOLLUX
> 
> THAT WAS REALLY UNRELATED BUT YEAH THAT WAS A THING THAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY
> 
> also how does this update system work because my friend told me that she gets an email about my fics when i update or whatever and i was like WHATHALT???? IT DOES THAT???????? so like yeah what does what how what
> 
> yeah
> 
> also wow some of you guys have really cute usernames like do_the_windy_thing and shipping_ruined_my_life gosh let me hug u
> 
> ALSO humanwhatshiscape I LOVE YOU OK THASTA A GR8 USERNAME
> 
> COD
> 
> wow im i really need to stop talking the NOTES ARE LONGER THAN THE ACTUAL UPDATE AT THIS POINT WOW "QUALITY UPDATE" MORE LIKE SHUT THE FUCK UP LAURA
> 
> later for real guys


	38. another not actual update cod damn (im sick again)

wow ok a thousand million apologies for talking so much and not writing more than ive been talking and stuff i just wanted to tell you guys some stuff

i think ive managed to get myself sick yet again. this time its come with splitting headaches and nearly losing my voice

i should be able to get a lot of sleep this weekend since im not doing anything so ill try to update with a chapter thats actually decent (where i dont talk for more than half of it goddamn) while im like lying in bed dying or something

geez my head hurts so much i cant even remember if i started the next chapter yet or not

update on the con - im actually probably going to be there for two days, so on the first day ill be john and the second day ill be jade (though i dont think any of you are going to it but w/e u kno)

my head hurts a lot.

fic idea. john gets really fucking sick and hes like dying in bed all day and dave is all like oh no john how do i help u and john is just like nyeyeararrhghhhh and dave is like holy shit ur not doin too good at all r u and in the end dave winds up taking care of john all day and then getting sick too so they both sleep together and eat soup together and miserably watch tv together all pathetically

ill get right on that shit

ehahehahdaf.ksdgwerjasd.

this fic is turning into my blog i fucking swear.

do any of you actually even look at my blog because if you do then i can stop talking so much on here and just make posts on my blog and tag them as "ridiculous" or something so you can look there... would that be better or

sighs everywhere.

its like 1:11 am rn i should sleep before my head explodes or something

crawls away to pitifully write the next chapter curled up in my bed

(see you later)


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaand now it's 2:33 am and i'm updating with the next chapter.
> 
> i felt bad about talking so much so i was like okay, let's just sit down and write this chapter and post it. yes.
> 
> i'll ask my beta about it whenever i wake up tomorrow. i need to stop trying to update when she's asleep and stuff jfc.
> 
> as of next chapter, this fic will be 100 pages long in my word document! it's also just a couple hundred words short of being 50,000 words long (the word count on here is kind of a lie because of the, like, two or so chapters i posted that werent chapters at all)
> 
> yeah.

You are Dave. Dave Strider, specifically. (But you should know that by now, seriously.)

You and John did _the nasty_ , and afterward bickered like an old married couple while you stood around in a skirt that you looked really really hot in.

And then you and him went and ate an ungodly amount of yogurt (why the hell he had so much you’ll never know) and promptly died on the couch. Not literally. You both just kind of flopped onto it like a couple of dead fish, complaining about how you shouldn’t have eaten so much fucking yogurt. And then John fell asleep, so now you’re finally dragging yourself back up to go change out of the goddamn skirt.

You go and do that (it’s not that interesting a process) and on your way back to the couch you almost literally crash into John’s dad. It’s creepy how he just seems to appear in the hallways half the time – you know he has a job, but you have no idea when he’s supposed to be home and not home because he’s just kind of automatically not here 90% of the time. Except for that 10% when he’s randomly showing up like a weirdo.

The Dad smiles at you all pleasant-like and you manage to smile back at him, even though you feel awkward as shit. You start to edge your way past him when you remember that you were going to try to tell him about you and John.

You decide you’re going to try that. Interpersonal skills GO.

“Hey,” you say as casually as you possibly can. You tilt to the side a little, trying to lean on something by habit, but there’s not really anything there except a wall. So you end up leaning on the wall at this really weird angle and you feel like an idiot.

Oh well.

“Hello, Dave,” The Dad responds. He’s nice enough, it’s just that literally every conversation you’ve had with him (there’s a grand total of two) has been about 4000% awkward.

“Sooo.” You shift around from your awkward position against the wall and cross your arms. “I’m kind of John’s boyfriend.”

You decided to just be straightforward about it, which you’re probably going to regret very, very soon.

“What?”

You shrug. “That’s it? We’re boyfriends. In a relationship. Dating. It’s not like we’re just close friends who happen to make out from time to time.”

“Oh. That’s nice.” There’s that pleasant smile again. You’re feeling awkward for about the third time in this conversation already, and you’re not sure if you should just leave or attempt to continue somehow.

“Yeah… just, uh. Wanted to tell you that.”

You nod conclusively and edge nervously past John’s dad, going back to the couch and plopping back down next to John again. You peer over toward the hall to see if his dad is going to come in, but he doesn’t, and you’re stuck feeling awkward still.

You’re not sure if that went well or not.

-

A few hours later would make it evening, and have you and John sitting around in his room idly with absolutely nothing to do. You’ve taken your shades off and tossed them on his desk, and he’s sitting there wiping his glasses off with his shirt. At this point it’s been nearly a week since the store closed, and you’re wondering when John’s going to go and try to find another job. You’re still kind of very afraid to go back to your apartment, but since you’ve got to go back someday you’re promised yourself that the day John starts doing his little job search you’ll make an attempt to go back.

You still haven’t crossed paths with The Dad again, and you aren’t certain if you should be concerned or not. If he’s the passive-aggressive type, then yes, you’re thinking you probably _should_ be concerned. However, if he genuinely couldn’t give less of a shit about how you’re going out with John, then you’re not going to complain.

“Hey, Dave?” John’s voice pulls you from your thoughts, and he replaces his glasses on his face carefully. “What was school like for you?”

“Hell” is your only response.

“Oh.” John smiles at you apologetically. “I actually really liked school.”

“I certainly didn’t.” You sigh and lean back a bit where you’re sitting on the floor. “I’ve always worn those fucking shades, right, and people would try to take them? Like… they’d act like I was just wearing them to try to be cool, and they’d tell me that I should just take them off because I’m not actually cool… and then when I wouldn’t, they’d try to take them.” You laugh nervously. “I never really told Bro, but one time I think he could tell I was upset over it because he made some comment to me about how I should just ‘beat their sorry asses into next year’ if they bother me.”

“Your bro is cool,” John says, and you snort. “I mean it!” he squeaks. “Like, he’s actually cool! I mean, you say he’s an asshole all the time but I think he seems really supportive of you. Even if he shows it in an assholish way.”

“I’d probably kill him if he was any less assholish.” You frown. “If he tried to act like a dad rather than a brother I don’t think I’d be able to stand him.”

John nodded slowly. “Yeah, if I were you I’d probably feel the same.”

You and John sit there in silence for a couple minutes, him taking his glasses back off and wiping them off some more. You eventually flop over onto your back and stare at the ceiling, looking at the weird shadows cast by the light on John’s desk and on the ceiling fan.

“I used to have this really close friend,” you finally say, breaking that silence. “I’m pretty sure he was permanently angry, but if I ever had an issue he was always there for me and he’d listen and stuff.”

“Oh, that’s cool!” John grins at you. “I wish I had a friend like that.”

You nod. “Yeah. He was really short, and kind of stupid sometimes… and he shouted a lot, but… he was still a pretty great guy. He had this stoner friend that was kind of an asshole.”

John giggles. “You have weird friends, Dave.”

“I guess so.” You smile at John, a tiny smile. “He was actually in love with this girl, but she apparently liked me instead of him. But he never turned on me, which I think was really cool of him. He had that kind of attitude where if the girl he loved was happy, he was happy, no matter who she was with.”

“He sounds great,” John says. “Did you lose touch with him or something?”

“He, uh.” You bite your lip nervously. “He died,” you add quietly.

John’s expression falls pretty quickly. You don’t think you’ve ever seen him genuinely depressed before, and it makes you feel kind of bad. (You never should have brought this up.)

“Oh.” He reaches over and takes your hand. “I’m sorry.”

You shake your head. “It’s… it’s not a big deal. That was years ago, anyway.”

“Did he ever have a job or anything?” John asks you.

“Not really.” You sigh. “He never graduated. I think he wanted to become a poet or something. That’s kind of why I try to write sometimes, because he used to sit there and scrawl in his fucking notebooks every day. It was inspiring and stuff.”

John sniffles and you look at him and realize he’s trying not to cry. When he notices you looking at him he smiles at you nervously. “Look at me, getting all depressed over someone I don’t even know.”

You sigh and hug him tightly, kissing his forehead a couple times. “He’d probably rant for five minutes about how overly dramatic you are if he was here to hear that.”

John giggles and hugs you back, sighing into you. “I’m not trying to be rude, Dave, but I kind of would really like it if we changed subjects.”

“Okay. When they’re in danger octopuses shoot a bunch of water out their asshole to propel themselves away.”

John squeaks and shoves you. “Out of their _butt_?! Dave!”

You look at him incredulously. “It’s not like I made it up, damn! Don’t you ‘Dave!’ me!”

John pouts. “Fine, fine. More freaky facts, please.”

“When they have sex planarians stab each other with their dicks.”

“Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“I was being sarcastic.”

And then he smacks you.

Of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (i wrote this really short fic once on my phone (im rlly disappointed b/c i cant find it anymore)  
> where like  
> dave was going to bed right  
> and he was telling bro about his day  
> but he like  
> i described him taking out this little picture of bro and telling it all about his day  
> and then when he was finished he'd fold it up and put it down and be all like "good night, bro"  
> haha  
> ha  
> striders are literally my weakness ok)
> 
> (i also found this thing on my phone just now its all like  
> "You stand in that old room. The room where you danced with John that one day, that rainy day when it was cold and you were so flustered you didn't notice. That day he played the piano, and you swept him up and danced with him until he learned how to do it right.  
> You sigh a deep, shuddering sigh, and you raise your arms up as if you're still holding him. 'Here's how you do it, John,' you mutter shakily to the silence.  
> And then you started to move, and you think you can almost feel his warmth.")
> 
> (i also wrote this fic once where it was all like  
> karezi right  
> so karkat and terezi were totally in this gr8 relationship but then something happened to terezi and she died, but before she died she would go and draw all these things that she wouldnt let karkat see. and a while after she died karkat started finding these little sheets of paper that she drew on left all over the place with little messages and stuff and ij ust  
> im tired ok ok ok  
> shrugs everywhere ill for real go to bed now g'night guys)
> 
> i hope im not too sick in the morning.
> 
> edit at like 12 pm: i am still sick in the morning. (i got lots of sleep but it was not restful sleep at all and i feel like ive been up all night. jfc)


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DID YOU KNOW DAVEKAT IS ONE OF MY OTPS

“No, fuck, Dave, it’s not that. I don’t care that she likes you, okay. I’m not gonna kick your ass for it or anything.”

You are Dave Strider (and it’s about seven years back from the current storyline). Your “permanently angry” friend is pacing around thoughtfully in his room while you lounge back in his (admittedly extremely comfortable) desk chair.

“Yeah, but you’re so fucking in love with her that I feel like I should at least try to push her in your direction or something. All like ‘oh, you know that Karkat guy is pretty rad. More rad than me, in fact’.” You lean forward and rest your elbows on your legs. “Or I could act like a complete and total dick so that she’ll hate me instead.”

“No, Dave!” Your angry friend stops his previously incessant pacing to glare at you. “I told you I didn’t care, okay? Don’t go pulling that stupid bullshit for my sake. It’s not worth it.”

You heave a sigh. This guy is _always_ a stubborn little shit – whenever you offer to do something for him or help him with girls or whatever, he has to wave you off and push you away because he never thinks he’s worth it. It makes you sad sometimes, honestly. “Karkat,” you say, looking up at him seriously. “You’re always saying that shit.”

“What shit?” he asks you, starting to resume his pacing again.

“The whole ‘I’m not worh it’ bullshit. You’re not as shitty as you think you are.”

“Oh, yeah. Suuuuuure.” He pauses once more to face you. “Have you even _heard_ some of the bullshit people say when they think I’m not listening?”

You’re just about to throttle him, honestly. “Let me tell you something.” You get up and walk up to him, taking hold of his shoulders. “You’re fucking worth it, okay? You’re _fine_. Stop saying that you’re worthless and that you’re terrible and horrible and all that shit, because it’s not even true. You’re giving in to the bullshit that people spout about you and that’s not even cool, so you need to stop.”

Usually his eyes have this intense, stressed look in them, but when you were telling him that his expression softened a _lot_ \- more than you think you’ve ever seen it.

“I guess you’re right,” he says quietly, and you smile just a bit. You finally got this asshole to listen to you.

“Good,” you tell him. “Now, I’m gonna try to push her in your direction, all right?”

He nods slowly, and you let go of his shoulders. He stands there for a moment and then sits on the floor, and you sit in front of him. He refuses to look at you, and instead just asks quietly “do you like her back”?

You almost laugh. “If I liked her back I wouldn’t be trying to get you into her head. I don’t even like girls, you raving idiot.”

“Oh, yeah.” He smiles a very, very tiny smile, the one you usually get to see when he smiles. You’re not sure if he’s even capable of smiling any bigger than that. “I forgot about that.”

“Mmhm.” You smile back at him and take his hands, raising them up and squeezing them gently. “And I’ve always thought _you_ were kind of cute, you dork.”

His face reddens and he finally looks up at you. “Liar. Don’t spew that bullshit at me.”

“Oh, but it’s true!” you say, scooting closer to him and letting go of his hands. You throw your arms around him and hug him tightly, yanking him close against you in the process. “You’re absolutely _adorable_.”

“Shut the fuck up!” he almost squeaks, trying to squirm away from you. You laugh and just hug him tighter. You reach up and ruffle his hair and he just about screams – he’s always been sensitive about his hair and his head in general.

“I’m determined to make you laugh,” you tell him, and you ghost your hands down his sides and tickle him. He bites his lip, hard, and tries to push your hands away. You persevere, however, and once you move over to this _one_ spot he all-out giggles.

“Fuck yes!” You grin at him and keep tickling him there until he’s actually laughing, and after a minute you stop and hug him again. He’s smiling a real smile for real now, you can tell, and he hugs you back cheerfully.

“Thanks.” He lets you go after a little bit and smiles at you some more, and you wonder if it feels good for him to actually fucking smile for once.

You promise yourself right then and there that you’re going to try to make him smile at least once every single day.

-

“What the fuck are you writing this time?”

You’re at Karkat’s again, sitting on his comfortable chair like usual. He himself is actually curled up on a really squishy beanbag chair with his knees drawn up to his chest, his little notebook propped up against his legs. He’s writing quite vigorously in it, and you’re curious as to what it is.

“A story” is his only response, and you chuckle to yourself. You probably shouldn’t bother him while he’s in his “zone”. Instead you just sit there patiently, watching him contentedly while he wrote. You’ve always liked how he looks when he’s writing – he doesn’t look too terribly irritated when he does, and sometimes he even looks really happy while he’s writing. You think he likes it so much because he can weave together whatever kind of world he wants (and you kind of know far too well how much he hates his current life (it makes you sad to hear)), and you’ve been thinking of trying your hand at it lately.

One time you came over here and found him asleep on his bed, still holding his pen. He was in the middle of writing a word when he fell asleep – you could tell from the way the line from his pen just kind of dwindled off from the word halfway down the page to where his hand was resting. You glanced over what was scrawled out on the page in his messy cursive, and you found that it was a poem. It was beautifully written, and it made you wonder why he didn’t want to let you read most of the things he wrote.

You let yourself float around in your thoughts for a little while while you wait for him to finish, and he finally yanks you back to reality when he shuts his notebook (it’s always a pretty violent motion). He puts it down carefully on his bed and clips his pen to the spiral on the side, and then he turns to you.

“Dave, why do you even hang around me so much?”

“Huh?” You shoot him a confused look – he’s never asked you anything like this before.

“Honestly, I’m an asshole.” Karkat sits on his bed and folds his hands in his lap. “You try to help me out and I just scream at you about how much I suck and don’t deserve it, and then whenever you’re over I usually just try to lose myself in my writing and ignore you.”

You shrug. “It’s because you’re so cute.”

“Seriously!”

“Okay, fine.” You pause a moment to think – you’d never really pinpointed exactly what it was about Karkat that made you like him; you just did. He’s a really complex person that is about 45% self-hatred, 45% anger, and 10% compassion. So yeah, he could seriously be an asshole sometimes, but there was that one 10% that always seemed to get to you. He is really irritable almost all the time, but at the same time he comes off as the type that cares a lot about his friends. You’re not about to give him a whole speech on that, though, so you try to dumb it down a little to something simpler.

“I think it’s really because you care so much about people,” you end up saying, leaning back in the chair a little more. “I mean, you talk about how much you hate everybody, but whenever someone comes to you with a problem you never push them away. You always try to help them.”

Karkat stares at you with seeming disbelief for several seconds (to the point where you honestly start to think that you’ve broken him) and then he relaxes quite a bit. “It’s nice to know you noticed that.”

You smile at him, and he manages one of his tiny smiles back.

You think you’re really starting to help him be happy for once.

-

You’re still Dave, only now you’re indescribably angry.

Of course you go to Karkat, in that room of his as usual. You practically bust in, and he looks up at you with some pretty genuine concern in his eyes.

“What the fuck happened?” he asks you, and you go over and flop down next to him on his beanbag chair and try not to beat the shit out of anything.

“I am absolutely done with Bro, I swear to God.” You take a lot of deep breaths and Karkat takes your hand, squeezing it gently.

“What’d he do this time?” he asks you quietly, and you take another deep breath.

“It was that fucking ‘what do you _mean_ you’re not going to college?’ conversation again,” you grumble. “I fucking hate how he does that bullshit. If I don’t want to go then I don’t want to go and I wish he’d just shut the fuck up about it.”

“Why don’t you want to go?” Karkat asks you. “I don’t think you ever told me.”

He’s running his thumb over your knuckles very lightly, and you’re trying to relax. “I just don’t. I don’t think I’d benefit from it, really – I hardly have any clue of a single thing I want to ‘be’ when I’m older, and honestly I couldn’t care less about being ‘successful’. I’m probably not going to have a family or any of that shit when I’m older, either, I mean… I’ve never even gone out with anybody. Not to mention how unforgivably stressful and horrible college is in general.”

Karkat nods slowly, and you close your eyes for a few seconds and take some more breaths while he speaks. “That’s okay. I mean, like you said, if you don’t want to go then no one else should try to change that.”

You nod as well and rub your forehead a bit with your free hand. “I’ve told him that, like, a billion times, but he’s just even more of a shit about it every time. He’s all like ‘oh, but you _have_ to be successful, just because _I_ didn’t go doesn’t mean you don’t have to go either’ and they’re all just really bullshitty arguments and I’m sick of them.”

Karkat sighs and leans over a bit, kissing your cheeks and your forehead. “He’s an asshole. Assholes are gonna be assholes. Just don’t lash out at him too bad or you’ll only make it worse.”

You nod and sigh. “Yeah, I know. I’ll try to talk to him about it sometime when we’re not at each other’s throats.”

He smiles at you, and you manage a smile back.

“If something really bad happens or he sends you off to college anyway and you don’t want to stay, you can just come here,” Karkat tells you. “We can sleep together and do lots of gay bullshit to cheer you up.”

You almost laugh. “That’s kind of a first. Usually it’s ice cream or something, but no: lots of gay bullshit.”

Karkat rolls his eyes, and you grin at him. “Thanks for listening to my shit.”

He nods. “It’s nothing.”

You’re certainly looking forward to the potential gay bullshit.

-

“He’s _what_?”

Yes, you are still Dave, and this time you’re on the phone.

You’ve always liked Karkat’s voice – even though it can be really loud and ranty and even shrill at times, it’s been a nice voice to listen to, especially when he’s giving you advice. It takes on that nice, friendly tone he has locked up in his little body, and it really makes you feel better. His eyes are nice, too – they always look so tired, but when he smiles they light up just the slightest bit, and you love that. There’s just this thing about him that tells you that he’s actually really happy to be around you, even if he’s never really said that out loud. Honestly, you kind of love him a lot (just not to the point where you’re having the sex with him).

So you’re sorta shutting down inside when you’re hearing that he’s _dead_ as of last night.

You’re not even sure who you’re talking to anymore – all you know is that this is the voice that’s telling you that your closest friend is dead: gone, passed, never to return, and you want it to stop. So you hang up, and then you just sit down on your floor and hug your knees very tightly to your chest. You really are shutting down inside: you’re not sure what you’re thinking anymore, and you feel like you can’t breathe.

Once you pull yourself together you head over to his home, where you encounter someone who tells you about how he died. You don’t want to hear it, so you just push past them and go into his room.

All you do is take his notebooks, look over the room one last time, and leave. It all feels so rushed, like you a) broke down b) went to his house c) took his stuff and d) came back home to break down again all in about ten minutes. You definitely didn’t though, and now you’ve found yourself buried under some thick blankets on your bed holding his notebooks. You spend what feels like several small eternities reading through the things he’s written, and you’d never ever have imagined these kinds of things were what was floating around in his head. It’s all so well-written – some of it’s about you, and a few were even _to_ you. In the end you cry yourself to sleep still hugging his things to you.

-

The next several years of your life were pretty much a living hell for you without him, and it was only when you found yourself forgetting what color his eyes were that you realized you didn’t have a single picture of him.

You’d give anything to have one of that smile you worked so hard to coax out of him. You’d give even more to have a recording of his voice, that voice that practically saved your life a couple times. You’d give your entire life to feel his hands over yours one more time, or to see that little sparkle in his eyes when he smiles.

You haven’t cried over him in almost a year, but after you talked to John about him you ran off to hide in the bathroom while you did once more.

You wonder if that girl he loved so much ever even learned that he’d died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shrugs idk how good this actually was but i've had davekat feels for like a billion years and since i'm so sick and lightheaded my rping skills have been 100% shit and i haven't been able to get rid of the feels
> 
> essentially i apologize profusely for this chapter
> 
> also wow i went and saw gatsby last night? cool movie guys rlly cool movie you should go see it if you haven't already
> 
> in some more other news my good friend told me earlier that she wanted to record herself reading fics like a um fic podcast sort of thing i dont remember what she called it gdi but she was like "i wanna read one of yours" so she actually recorded herself reading my fic "sticky notes" earlier and wow let me just say she has a really great voice for reading like hot dang she did an amazing job at that
> 
> so far she hasnt posted it anywhere so i can't show you yet but as soon as she does i'll let you guys know b/c wow she's wonderful
> 
> one more thing: if you need to find it for whatever reason i did start a tag on my blog for stuff about this fic (it's just "ridiculous") and there's only like one post in there rn but it's cronusdamnpora.tumblr.com/tagged/ridiculous if you wanna look there for ramblings from me
> 
> okay bye guys!! (apologizes more for the chapter)


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I WAS FREAKING THE FUCK OUT THE OTHER DAY BECAUSE WHEN I WENT TO WRITE THIS CHAPTER IN RIDICULOUS.DOCX I SAW THAT I'D ACCIDENTALLY DELETED THREE FUCKING CHAPTERS I ABOUT HAD A HEART ATTACK
> 
> EDIT: a couple people left some really nice comments about the last chapter or two with karkat and stuff - saying it was emotional etc - and just wow i really appreciate those comments like wow that was super nice of you guys to say! ouo

You’re Dave.

To be quite clear, here’s the past two days or so of your life in bulleted list form.

o Played Go Fish with John (and got your ass soundly kicked)  
o Made your “comfort sex” suggestion  
o Went and cuddled all over the place with John (no comfort sex yet)  
o Fell asleep  
o Woke up to John being apparently very turned on by something  
o THE SEX  
o Weird ex-girlfriend (who is _totally_ Rose) skirt adventures  
o Talked to John about The Dad  
o Told The Dad about you and John  
o Got kind of scared about Possibly Passive-Aggressive Dad  
o Told John about Karkat  
o (cried about Karkat)

And here we are.

You just finished crying over Karkat, and now you’re shuffling miserably back to John from the bathroom where you were hiding to do that. You’re mentally kicking yourself for being such an _emotional loser_ , but when you get back to John’s room he doesn’t make any kind of comment to you about it, which you’re relieved about.

You hobble over to his bed and sit down on it, and after a few minutes of pathetic silence John scoots over next to you and claps a hand on your shoulder.

“Dave,” he says, shaking his head solemnly, “I can’t let you go on like this.”

You shoot him a look. “You act like you’re about to put me out of my misery or something.”

John squeaks. “N-no! Not that!” He pushes you gently and then crosses his arms.

“What?”

“Aren’t you gonna ask me what I’ve got in store for you?”

“No.”

He huffs. “Fine. You’re no fun, Dave.” John sighs and then smiles at you. “I think you need… GHOSTBUSTERS!”

You look at him with about the most unimpressed expression you can manage. “Are you actually serious right now?”

He nods. “I’m dead serious, Dave.”

“Careful.” You smirk at him. “If you’re that serious, the Ghostbusters might come for you too.”

John gapes at you, then just grins and hugs you. “I love you so much, Dave.”

“Mmhm.” You smile and hug him back. “Love you too, Dork #1.”

“Dork #1?” John lets you go and shoots you a funny look. “Who’s Dork #2?”

“Not sure.” You look down at yourself, and then back up at John. “I think it’s me.”

John giggles and grabs your hands tightly. “Let’s just go watch the movie, Dork #2.”

You sigh and nod (whether to go watch it or not is probably not an argument you want to get anywhere near), and John kisses your nose before hopping up and tugging you back along into the living room. Once you get in there he practically flings you onto the couch while he gets the movie ready, and when he does that he goes and flings himself next to you. He curls up close to you and you hold his hand while the DVD player starts up because he’s so fucking jittery right now that you’re almost afraid he’ll explode. (He must have some kind of insane passion for this movie. Insane.)

At some point he can’t seem to contain himself and he declares that he’s going to go make popcorn before he springs up and practically flies into the kitchen. It’s not even to the title screen yet.

You roll your eyes and wait idly for him to get back, but while you’re waiting, his dad comes walking through the room with a glass of some kind of vividly blue drink (you’re suspecting it’s Kool-Aid or something like that). He’s walking kind of close to the couch where you’re sitting, but you think nothing of it until he trips and spills that drink all over your _head_.

You get up quickly so it doesn’t get on the couch any more than it might have already, and when you turn to see where The Dad is, he’s nowhere in sight.

You sigh and go into the bathroom, sticking your head in the shower for a little bit to wash the stuff out. It didn’t really get on your shirt too much, so you’re really just worried about your hair and your face getting all sticky. Once you’re pretty sure you’ve got it all off you turn off the water and dry off your face, but when you glance in the mirror on your way out of the bathroom you almost scream.

Your hair (which is usually a very light, almost white _blond_ ) is a bright, cotton candy blue. (And it’s not even blue all over – there’s still some little blond parts in your hair.)

That was _not_ Kool-Aid.

You stare at yourself incredulously for a minute and then hurry back to the living room where John is sitting with his popcorn. He looks up and smiles at you, but when he spots your hair his eyes widen.

“Dave! What did you do to your hair?”

“ _I_ didn’t do anything,” you say, sitting next to him. “Your dad is insane. I swear.”

John giggles. “Ohhh. That makes sense.”

“What?”

“Dad pulls pranks sometimes,” John says, and he’s smiling like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “And so do I! It’s just kind of thing around here that you’ll have to look out for. You’re lucky I haven’t completely fucked you up yet.”

You stare at John like he’s lost his mind, and then point at your hair. “Is this _permanent_?”

John shrugs. “I have no idea.”

“Fuck.” You decide to forget about it and just try to get comfortable with John and watch the movie, but that’s proving to be a bit difficult when you’re just _waiting_ for The Dad to come along and, you don’t know, accidentally drop a grenade into the popcorn. You probably look like an idiot glancing everywhere _except_ at the TV, and John even stops offering you popcorn after a couple of scenes. You’re making quite an effort not to get up and look around for John’s dad, but at the same time you’re trying not to make comments on how stupid the movie is. It’s pretty annoying, and you have a headache now, so you hug John a little closer and lean on him, closing your eyes and trying to just fall asleep. You get pretty close, but then John suddenly shakes you and points at the TV with _way_ too much enthusiasm. He squawks at you about how you’re missing some part in the movie, and you just roll your eyes and try to go back to sleep.

-

The next thing you know, you’re waking up on your back on the couch with John on top of you. _Right_ on top of you. His head is resting on your chest and he’s got his arms wrapped around you (effectively trapping you). The TV’s still going on some other movie, and it looks like John fell asleep while he was watching it. He still looks stupidly happy in his sleep and you feel a little bad about waking him up, but… your back is kind of killing you right now.

“John,” you whisper to him, reaching up and poking his head. He doesn’t do anything but shift around a little and tighten his hold on you, and you sigh and try to endure it for a little bit longer. It’s hard, though, and barely a minute later you prod at him a couple times more. This time he wakes up – sort of, anyway – and looks up at you pretty sleepily. He whispers “hi, Dave”, and kisses your jaw a couple times. You sigh and try to sit up, but John’s still about 98% asleep, so he’s really not helping you in the least. Unfortunately, you have to shove him off you, which ultimately results in him getting dumped off the couch onto the floor. You sit up and stretch kind of a lot (your back isn’t killing you anymore, yay) while John rubs his eyes and picks himself up off the floor.

“You didn’t even hesitate to do that, did you?” John squeaks. You shrug.

“My back was hurting a lot and you wouldn’t move your sorry ass off of me.”

John yawns a couple times and stands up, shuffling back to the couch and flopping down next to you. “You’re such a dork,” he comments, his voice seeming to just drag along from drowsiness. You roll your eyes and glance around for a clock, and you spot one right on top of the TV: it’s about four in the morning.

You wonder if Bro is awake. There was a while when you were little where it seemed like he would never ever sleep, so you were very determined to figure out when he managed to do so. However, every time you tried, you wound up falling asleep yourself.

You’ve no idea where your phone’s gotten off to, but you’re guessing it’s probably in John’s room somewhere. While he’s sitting there falling back asleep on the couch you get up carefully and sneak back there – sure enough, your phone is sitting there on his desk.

You take it and wander back to the couch, having a small debate in your head about whether to try to talk to Bro or not. If you text him he probably won’t answer you, and if you call him he’ll a) ignore you b) be asleep and also ignore you c) cuss you out over the phone or d) be so obnoxiously cool about it that he pretends there’s nothing bothering him at all. Which bothers _you_.

You decide just to text him first, since you’re not about to get into some shouting match over the phone and wake up everyone. You send him something really generic just to see if he’ll respond, and after you do you set your phone down and heave a sigh, cuddling up next to John.

Wow, you really used to sigh a lot before you actually became friends with him.

John’s sleeping again, you’re pretty sure, and you find yourself nodding off as well. You haven’t gotten anything back from Bro yet (you aren’t surprised), and you’re just about to give up and sleep some more. Not much to do at four A.M.

You sigh some more (you’re starting to do that a lot again) and hug John a little closer to you. You fall asleep again with him.

You wake up to someone jabbing you pretty hard, and when you open your eyes to see who it is, all you want is to go back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter was kind of shitty, but my mind and feelings and stuff have been aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall over the place this week
> 
> (and i was gonna send it to my beta but i couldn't get hold of her like the past three days because i was either asleep or she wasnt online hhhh)
> 
> but yeah so sorry for the shitty chapter
> 
> i'm just hahhshfaskljflkj i'm going on an Actual Real Date tomorrow afternoon and i've been super jittery and flustered about that since like tuesday and i'm just kind of jumpy about everything and my head has basically been UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE SATURDAY SATURDAY UPDATE FEELINGS UPDATE YOU NEED TO UPDATE FEELINGS SATURDAY SATURDAY SATURDAY SATURDAY
> 
> yeah.
> 
> i'm gonna try to find my beta today.
> 
> thanks for reading guys ouo


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY OKAY I'M GONNA TALK ABOUT MY ACTUAL REAL DATE FOR A MINUTE HERE
> 
> It went super great like wow we went and walked around for a little bit and ate candy together and then we went and saw a movie and held hands at the movie (which was super dorky but we're both really awful at having enough confidence to do couple things) and afterward we walked around and talked and stuff and then she was gonna kiss me but she got too nervous and just smooched my cheek instead ouo
> 
> Basically it was really nice and I was super happy all day yesterday
> 
> ehhhheeeeeeeeeeee  
> \--  
> (two edits down in the other notes)

“You are not who I wanted to wake up to.” You’re Dave Strider. You turn away from the asshole standing over you and try to ignore him. “Go away.”

“Hell no.” Your brother crosses his arms and huffs. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”

“Oh, you got your shit back?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, congratulations, Mr. My Only Friends Are Puppets,” you say, turning over and squinting at Bro. “Now leave me alone.”

“No,” Bro says, and you sigh. “I want you to tell me why you tried to get rid of them.”

“If you’re gonna kill me or something, then just go ahead, damn.” You sit up and brush your hair out of your face, squinting at Bro some more.

“I’m not going to do anything to you,” Bro says. “I couldn’t care less at this point. I just want to know why you pulled that shit and why you couldn’t just talk to me about it if you had an issue with me.”

“You almost never listen when I have some kind of problem with your fucking puppets,” you say. “I figured I wouldn’t even bother.”

“Well, next time just talk to me.”

He sits next to you at that point (you’re not sure where John’s gone) and you’re a bit surprised that he’s not going to absolutely beat your ass for this shit. You guess he’s trying not to send you both back into that phase where it was nothing but arguments and almost no actual communication.

It’s quite an effective way to make you feel like shit.

You heave a sigh, and look over at Bro. “Sorry,” you finally say. “I’m not even going to make any excuses. Just. Sorry.”

“Oh, no,” Bro says. “Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to Cal.”

He pulls out fucking Lil’ Cal and holds him out to you, and it takes pretty much all of your self-restraint not to facepalm and shove the puppet away.

“Sorry, Cal,” you mutter, and you feel like a ten year-old.

Bro smiles, actually fucking _smiles_ at you, and does that fucking thing he used to do when you were about eight: he reaches over and ruffles your hair.

You roll your eyes and turn away from him, and then John comes walking in the front door. You shoot him a look and he grins at you.

“Hey, Dave!” He walks on over with about as much cheer as an elf that lives in a giant gingerbread house during Christmas time, and you look at him like he’s insane.

“Where the fuck did _you_ go?” you ask, and he shrugs.

“I went to go see if they turned the store into anything yet,” he says. “They haven’t, by the way. Oh, and I went to that museum and turns out they’re still hiring, so I think I’m going to try and apply there. It’s so funny, I talked to this girl named Jade about it and turns out we’re related!”

You blink at him. “Really? Jade?”

“Yeah!” He continues beaming with a smile about as bright as a lighthouse, and you shrug.

“Well, cool.”

John leans over and kisses your cheek, and then turns to Bro. “Hey, Mr. Bro!”

Bro raises an eyebrow. “Where’d the ‘Mr.’ come from?”

John shrugs. “Not sure! Should I just drop it.”

“Yeah, probably.”

After that John chatters happily to Bro while you sit there feeling increasingly awkward – you wonder how long it’ll be until Bro comments on your blue hair – and eventually you just get up and go to steal some of John’s food. When you come back with (a very large amount of) yogurt, John’s sitting where you were still talking excitedly, and Bro actually looks pretty genuinely interested.

What the _fuck_.

You stand there in the doorway and eat your yogurt quite pointedly while John and Bro continue to ignore you, and after about five minutes of that you finally sigh and decide it’s time to just get their fucking attention.

“Hey, Bro,” you call out, and you’re still ignored. “Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro! DIRK!”

Bro jumps a bit and looks over at you. “Eugh. No, don’t use that name.”

“Your name is Dirk?” John asks brightly, and Bro nods. “That’s so _cool_!”

Bro just smiles at John, and you march over and smack him with your spoon. “Don’t go trying to steal my man, you asshole.”

“Oh, no, you’re too late. I think I’ve already won him over.” Bro grins at you. “But hey, I think we should probably leave anyway. You’ve been here for, what, a week? Two?”

“Something like that,” you mutter, putting your spoon back in the bowl.

“Have you been wearing John’s clothes or something all this time?” he asks, and you just glare at him. He laughs. “That’s _adorable_.”

“You know what? Yeah, I think we should leave,” you say, smacking Bro with your spoon again and then tossing the bowl at John. “I’ve already got my phone and shit so we can just pick up and _go_.”

Bro sighs. “Fine.” He turns to John and pats his shoulder. “Later, kid.”

John giggles that obnoxiously cheery little giggle of his and waves daintily at Bro. “’Bye, Mr. Dirk!”

You grab Bro’s arm and drag him up from the couch, and on your way to the door you swear you see John’s dad glaring at you from the hallway. (What a creep.)

You just look away and keep going, and soon you and Bro on well on your way back to the apartment (where you’re sure there’s a small army of puppets waiting for you).

-

Now you’re John, and Dave just dragged Dirk (who has _such a cool name_!) on out of your house. You’re a bit disappointed, but you figure he probably should have left, like, a week ago anyway, so. You won’t complain.

You go and toss Dave’s yogurt stuff into the sink and then head cheerfully up to your room to get your résumé and such in order so you can go off and apply at the museum. You hope to get that done by tomorrow.

You get on your computer and make sure all your things are up to date, and once you get that done you print your résumé out and put it in a nice place on your desk so it doesn’t get messed up.

You’re actually in a _great_ mood today, so you go and get the phone from downstairs and call Rose. Even though you didn’t know her _all_ that well while you worked with her, you still thought she was pretty nice, so you’d like to catch up with her and see if she’s already working again.

She picks up after just a few rings, and you greet her cheerfully. “Hey, Rose!”

“Hi, John.”

“What have you been up to?” You go over to your bed and sit down, then lean over and open your window while you’re at it. “Got a new job yet?”

“No, actually.” You hear her sigh. “I don’t want to go somewhere that’s too far away, and I can’t find anywhere that’s hiring.”

“Oh! Well, that newish museum has been hiring for a while, and I think I’m going to try to apply there! Maybe you could too?”

“Perhaps.”

You giggle. “There’s this really nice girl there, Jade, who helped me out today. It’s… it was actually kind of awkward, since I sort of dated her a while back?” You bite your lip. “Um… and we’re related, apparently.”

Rose laughs, and you manage a smile. “Well, it’s nice to hear you’re doing okay, John.”

You smile, and you and Rose talk idly about jobs and such for a while until she has to go knit or something. You’re not sure.

It’s been a pretty good day, in your opinion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: i might not actually finish this fic so soon - school decided to make this week the Let's Murder Laura Week Even Though There's Only Ten Days of School Left  
> seriously i have 90 questions in practice test things to do every night and i have an experiment to do and a paper to write and a poster to make and all this stuff is due like the day before we start exams and i am jST HAVING A HEART ATTACK CONSTANTLY OKAY  
> yeah.  
> and then this weekend is the con so   
> yeah  
> yeah  
> i'm going to fail my classes.  
> \--  
> okay so like in the middle of the night last night i got an idea of how i wanted to end this story (i've actually had the last chapter written for a couple months now) and so i think i'm gonna try to end this fic in the next few chapters unu
> 
> it's been super nice talking to you all through my (excessive) notes and i appreciate you all reading!!
> 
> it's a little early for goodbyes though ouo
> 
> in other news i made a kik so if you have a smartphone and use kik my username is "davesies"!!
> 
> (if you wanna contact me anywhere else there's my blog of course and i have a list on my about page (http://cronusdamnpora.tumblr.com/about) of other places you can find me)
> 
> i've also started using the tag "ridiculous" on my blog for real (http://cronusdamnpora.tumblr.com/tagged/ridiculous) if there's some random comment i want to make that relates to fics and stuff idk it's kind of dumb really
> 
> anyway i'm going to the con animazement this coming weekend!! so probably not any updates that weekend if this story is even still going ahhhh that's so painful to say
> 
> i'll let you guys go now!! bye!  
> \--  
> EDIT: i actually got my beta to look this chapter over so CHEERS FOR ME IM GONNA EAT A COOKIE TO CELEBRATE


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok imo this chapter isnt so great but thats ok just
> 
> yeah

You are still John, only now it’s several days later and you’ve got yourself a job.

It was a quick process, actually – there wasn’t so many people applying there anymore, so you got your résumé in and had a (very short) interview and then _boom_ they said you were great for it and that you should come and work the next Monday.

Lucky.

You tried to call Dave, but all you heard on the other end was a lot of crashing noises and screaming, so you just kind of sat there for a moment and then hung up.

He called you a couple minutes later, though, and told you that he was watching a very loud movie. You just decided to forget about it.

You told him about your job and stuff and he seemed genuinely happy for you, but apparently Bro is holding him hostage for a while since he’d been gone for so long. You told him you’d swing by on your way the first day to see how he’s doing.

Speaking of that, you’re a bit disappointed that you’ll have to take a bus now – the museum isn’t that far outside of town, but it’s kind of in a place that would be pretty hard to walk to. That’s what you’re mainly sad about, actually – working at the other store was nice because you could just walk there and back in the afternoons and Dave would come by sometimes and hang out but you’re certain he won’t be able to just _do_ that out of the blue now. Unless he comes and stays at the museum for pretty much the entire day. (That would get boring after a couple days. Not to mention he’d have to keep paying admission over and over.)

After you’re done talking with Dave and whatnot you decide to get some stuff done around your house. Your dad isn’t home, you’re pretty sure (he keeps pulling his disappearing act and then reappearing out of nowhere), so you clean up in your room a little bit. There’s clothes all over your floor, and you’re thinking some of them are probably Dave’s, so you just sweep those off into a corner until you can sort them out. When you get to Jade’s skirt, however, you start feeling very awkward and decide you should probably get rid of it. (You’ll give it to her when you go to work in a few days. Yeah.)

You toss the skirt on top of your Miscellaneous Clothes Pile and then throw away some old papers and candy wrappers and such from your desk. By now your room is actually considerably cleaner than it was before, so you move on to the room downstairs with the piano. You have stacks of music _everywhere_ , and it’s about time you sorted them out and put them in a better place. (You need a bookshelf.)

You sit on the floor and start making sure each stack has its music in alphabetical order, and you really feel like you’re working in the music store again. It’s kind of depressing, really.

That takes a really long time (there’s a lot of music) and you even find yourself waking up at some point lying in a pile of sheet music and books. You glance around yourself and realize you must have knocked one of the stacks over and fallen asleep, so you decide to just call it a day and go to bed properly.

You get up (leaving the music as is) and shuffle back to your room. You’re not sure what happened, but the next thing you know you’re waking up on your floor. You have no idea what time it is, but you do know that you’re just _really really tired_ , so you get up, hobble over a few steps, and then collapse on your bed. You’ve bruised your arm somehow (probably when you fell on your floor and passed out), but you just ignore it and try to fall asleep again.

-

Now you’re Dave.

You’ve been trying to get a hold of John. You called him a couple times yesterday but he never picked up, and you’re trying again this morning. Last you talked to him, he told you about his new job and said he’d come by around when he had to leave in a couple days – and that was two days ago.

He finally does pick up this time, but whatever he says in greeting is just a muffled slur and you’re wondering for a second if he got really drunk or something.

“John, where have you been?” you ask him. “Don’t you start tomorrow?”

“Huh?” John sounds like he didn’t get any of what you just said. “What? I think I fell asleep.”

“You fell asleep for all day yesterday?”

“Whaaaaaat?” You hear John shift around and then there’s a clatter, and you’re pretty sure he just dropped the phone. “Dave, it is burning up in my house right now. I didn’t know it was summer.”

You sigh. “It’s not summer.”

“It’s so hot though!”

You think for a moment and then sigh all over again. “Did you get yourself sick?”

“I might have.” You hear John yawn a ridiculous number of times, and then he sneezes. “I was cleaning up and stuff in my room and in the piano room and there was lots of dust and stuff on the sheet music… and stuff….”

“You should probably try and get more sleep,” you tell him. “When does your shift start?”

“Twelve o’clock?” John sighs and actually sounds really confused and unsure to you. “Two o’clock.”

“Which is it?”

“One o’clock.” There’s a very long pause, and then John gasps. “No! I remember it now! It’s two. Two o’clock.”

“Okay, two o’clock. I’m gonna come over and make sure that if you’re not better by then, you’ve got your ass up and you’re _getting_ better.”

You hang up a couple minutes later.

-

The next day, you’re still Dave. It’s about eleven-something A.M., and you managed to escape your bro. (He was actually sleeping this morning so you took the opportunity to get out of there.) Now you’re walking on down to John’s house. It’s cold, and you hope he’s still not burning to death in his house.

When you get there nobody answers the door (of course) but it’s unlocked, so you just push it open and edge inside, then sneak up the stairs and into John’s room. He’s wrapped up in a blanket on his bed, still sleeping, and you go over and poke his cheek gently. He jerks awake and blinks a bunch of times before squinting at you, and you sigh.

“You didn’t even take your glasses off.” You take his glasses off his face and put them down on his desk, and then he starts complaining about how cold he is. You glance around for another blanket to find for him, but then he reaches out and grabs on to your arm, pulling himself up into a sitting position.

“What are you doing?” you ask. You try to push him back down to how he was, but he just shakes his head and holds your hands, pulling himself up again so he’s standing.

“I wanna go take some medicine.”

Over the next several minutes you help John shuffle around and get some medicine for his head and his nose and whatnot, and by then he’s actually awake for what’s probably the first time in a day or two.

You sit with him on the couch after he drinks some water, and he just teeters over and leans on your shoulder. “I’m feeling better than I was before, I promise,” he says. “I don’t wanna miss my shift today.”

“Hopefully those meds will kick in before you have to leave,” you tell him. “The bus ride’s not too long so we should probably go at, like… one forty-five.”

“You’re gonna come with me?”

“Yeah, I’ve got to make sure you don’t die or miss your stop if you fall asleep on the bus.”

John smiles at you. “Thanks. I’ll try not to die.”

You kiss his forehead and hug him a little closer, and he just sits there with you. He nods off a couple times, but after a little while he really seems to wake up. You think it’s the medicine.

He gets up and drinks some more water, and you cut the TV on to some weird game show. John comes back and sits with you again, and he’s actually sitting up on his own this time.

Yay for medicine.

By the time he tells you that he’s really feeling better than before and that he thinks he can work, it’s almost one thirty and you should both probably be heading down to the bus stop soon. It takes a little while, but you manage to get John to change and eat a little bit before you both go. You’re glad he’s starting to feel better.

The bus ride there is uneventful. John falls asleep again, leaned up against you, and wakes up every time there’s a particularly bad bump in the road – only to fall asleep all over again. You wake him up a couple minutes before you get there, and he yawns several times before stretching and rubbing his eyes.

You get him off the bus and you both stand together in the parking lot in front of the entrance while he straightens himself out.

“You think you can still do this?” you ask him, and he nods.

“I’m really tired, but hopefully I’ll be on my feet most of the time.” John smiles at you. “I don’t think I’ll fall into a coma like I did yesterday.”

“That wouldn’t be good. Do you want me to go in with you and hang out while you’re working? Then I can go home with you and shit without having to ride the bus a trillion times.”

John nods a tiny bit, and you smile and kiss his cheek. “Don’t worry. I have money this time.”

“Good.”

You walk him in there, and he scurries off to Jade while you go and pay admission so you can wander around.

Yeah.

-

All throughout John’s shift you don’t see him but once when he’s following Jade down the hallway. He looked _much_ better, and even waved at you in that enthusiastic way of his while he passed by. Seeing him like that really helped you worry less, so you were a lot more content while you shuffled around looking at all the shit.

He came along and grabbed you once it was time to leave, and you both got to stand out in the cold waiting for the bus.

“Hey,” you say after a couple minutes. “This is kind of a really stupid time and place to say this, but I’ve been thinking about some shit and I honestly wouldn’t mind spending about the rest of my life with your dorky butt.”

John glances over at you and stares at you for a couple minutes, but you don’t react to him at all. “Well, I…” he begins. “Dave, that wasn’t romantic in the absolute _least_.”

“Shut your mouth,” you say, poking his cheek. “I’m not being ironic or anything.”

“What, really?” John almost squeaks. “W-well, then, okay? I… yeah, okay. I wouldn’t mind that either.”

“Good.”

John stands there pretty awkwardly for a little bit, and eventually reaches over and takes your hand while you’re both standing there waiting. “Does this mean you want us to go and get married or something?”

“Um… maybe? I’m honestly afraid your dad will come and set me on fire though if we do.”

John smiles and turns to you. “I promise I’ll put you out if he sets you on fire.”

You roll your eyes and hug him tightly, kissing his cheek a couple times.

“You are absolutely ridiculous, John.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> theres only one chapter left guys!!
> 
> i've actually finished writing it altogether i've had these last two chapters written for over a day or two now 
> 
> (tears)
> 
> okay so i'm gonna leave this one here for now and then i'll update with the very last chapter later tonight i think 
> 
> see you then!!


	44. Chapter 44

It’s one of those days.

One of those days in the dead of winter when the sky is overcast and the air is cold, and you swear it’s the perfect day for snow.

Instead, it rains.

In this rain you’re walking down the sidewalk, occasionally pushing up your glasses as you go. You try to smile at people you pass, but this dumb weather is making you kind of unhappy.

It’s _raining_.

Really, you like the rain, but when the weather is so perfect for snow? It’s depressing to you, and you were really hoping for snow, but nope.

Rain.

You step up and come to a stop at a crosswalk, blinking and wiping off the lenses of your glasses a bit – the raindrops were getting on them. You shudder a bit from the cold, and a car shoots past very quickly, startling you. It continues down the street a ways and drives through a puddle, soaking some poor guy down there.

You’ve decided as of today that you think you’re going to move from this town.

You continue walking along after you cross the street, and you see you have to stop at another crosswalk a little way ahead. More standing still in the rain for you!

You pause in front of a music store first, though. You’ve passed this store before, and you’ve been inside, and even though you don’t really need much from the store, you like it. It’s small and old and, well, you just like it, and you’ve been thinking about getting a job there.

You’re gonna do it.

But first, you’ve got to get home, so you continue walking and stop at the crosswalk. The light is taking a long time to change, and you’re getting more and more wet with rain.

You glance up for a moment and blink a few times. There’s someone else directly across the street from you. You can’t see him all that well because of all the water on your glasses, so you wipe those off and then squint at him. He’s got a bright red sweatshirt on, but he’s absolutely soaked with water.

Was he the guy down the street that the car drove past earlier?

One thing really catches your eye, though. He’s wearing very dark shades, and you can’t figure out why. You wonder first if he’s blind, but then you figure he’d have one of those canes to tap along the sidewalk or something, or one of those dogs, or at least somebody else to walk with him. So you dismiss that idea, and figure he’s just weird.

You hope he won’t try to talk to you when you walk past him when the light changes, but then – oh, it’s changing, and you’re both walking across the street.

However, shortly after you step off the sidewalk, that old phone of yours rings. (You’re thinking of getting rid of it, really.) You pause a moment and pull it out and answer it, and just as you do you pass by the weird guy.

Right when he passes you he hurries over to the other side, and you wonder what got in to him.

Once you get to the other side of the street, you put your phone down for a moment and look back across the street.

That guy is looking at you, and you find yourself staring back at him.

You shake your head and continue down the sidewalk, and you’ve decided that maybe this town isn’t so bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand that marks the very end of this fic.
> 
> I'm going to miss all of you!! It's been a super great four (maybe a little more) months writing this fic and hopefully I've improved a little on the way, since this was my first fic. ouo
> 
> If you wanna stay in contact with me or something I'm always on my blog and Pesterchum and all, so I'll be there!!
> 
> Hopefully I'll get a new fic started up soon. I've got a bunch of little ones I want to post first.
> 
> Thanks for reading! See you all some other time! <3


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